GIJoe Secrets: Part 4
by Jaenelle Angelline
Summary: The Joes focus on helping Shana and cam recover. Meanwhile, plans move forward to prosecute their trafficker. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 62: Numb

**Chapter 62: Numb**

Snake Eyes sat quietly for long moments in the silent conference room.

He'd been numb since they'd found Shana, numb since they'd left the island. He'd been feeling bits and pieces of her ordeal with her—and now, there was evidence in front of him that proved he had indeed been with her through some of her ordeal; the crucifixion was only the most recent of her tortures. But he'd felt the drugs, the anguish, the pain that Shana had experienced.

It still didn't prepare him for the sight of Shana nailed to a cross. He'd been looking forward to finding Shana again, to seeing her again, and not once had he wondered what condition she'd be when he got her back. He hadn't been prepared—there was no way he could have been prepared—to see the terrifying blankness in her eyes, to look into those familiar green eyes and not see Shana looking out at him.

He'd cursed his lack of a voice as he crouched beside her on the floor, leaving it up to Duke and Allie and Lifeline to figure out how to get her off. With her eyes glazed and unseeing, he might have been able to bring her 'back' to him if he'd still had a voice and could call her. As it was, the only thing he could do was hold her, cradle her in his arms and reassure himself that she was still alive, that she would bounce back from this.

Charlie, unlike him, did have a voice. Cam had seemed to cling to that, cling to the sound of his words, right before Stretcher had sedated her for the trip home. Neither of the men had left their significant other's side until they were back at base, thirty-six hours after their rescue. As soon as they got off the plane, Doc had rushed them into emergency surgery.

Snake Eyes had been absolutely firm on wanting to stay in the infirmary until Shana woke up, but Allie had just as firmly nixed that idea for both him and Charlie. "No," she said when she'd seen both men making themselves comfortable on a couple of chairs usually reserved for those waiting for friends coming out of surgery. "Both of you are going to get out. Go shower, change, get some sleep; this isn't going to be fast or easy." Charlie had gotten up, without a word, and gone back to the quarters he shared with Cam, with the evident intention of following Allie's advice.

Snake Eyes had left the infirmary on Allie's command, but had been unable to concentrate on anything. With Shana now safe in the infirmary, he was focused now on when he would be able to see her next. When would she wake up? Would she wake up? Again and again his mind played images of her rescue; he kept seeing her hanging there on the cross, her eyes glazed and unseeing, her mind broken to the point where she could no longer even recognize him beside her. Her agonized whimpering had calmed slightly when he was touching her, when he was near her, but he didn't know if that was just her reacting to his presence.

He wandered the corridors aimlessly, barely acknowledging the subdued but jubilant greetings everyone sent his way. _Why celebrate,_ he thought irritably, _we don't know for sure whether she's really going to be okay or not? _But in the face of their happiness he couldn't be the one to tell them that, couldn't be the one who burst their bubble and told them just because they had gotten her back and she was alive didn't necessarily mean she was going to be all right. He didn't know if they would believe him; they hadn't, after all, seen her the way he'd seen her; hadn't been there to see that it was Shana's body but Shana herself was no longer 'home', no longer 'there'. They hadn't seen that blank fog in her green eyes. Hadn't seen the emptiness behind her gaze.

When he finally found himself back in the infirmary hours later, with the base's lights dimmed while on 'night' shift, he caught Doc just getting out of surgery.

He hesitated a moment in the infirmary door, remembering Allie chasing himself and Charlie out of there earlier, but Doc smiled wearily as he beckoned Snake Eyes in. "Come in. I told Allie it was useless chasing you off, that you wouldn't be sleeping and showering until you had news, but she insisted. However, at least now I have news to give you." He hefted a medical folder in his hands, levity gone. "I understand you brought back the man who was responsible for having done these things to Cam and Shana, and with that in mind I'm pretty sure this is going to come out in some court at some point somewhere. So a lot of this is going to be written in a very clinical, detached way to paint a picture for the court, and while rules normally restrict viewing of confidential medical files to relatives, I'm going to let you take a look at her file. Purely confidential, of course, and if anyone asks how you got it I will disavow knowledge of the act." A wry smile, quickly gone. "But I still feel it's important that you know what happened to her, so you can handle some of the issues that might arise." He led Snake Eyes into a small conference room, deposited the medical report on the table, and closed the door.

Snake Eyes had forced himself to read the whole thing, front to back. Then he sat quietly in the conference room as the numbness he'd felt since he'd first seen Shana on the island wore off and emotions took over.

Shock first; some of the things that had been done were beyond cruel. Barbaric was closer but still didn't even begin to describe what she'd endured, what that sick son of a bitch had done to her. Evil was the only word that came to mind to describe the mind that had had Shana whipped, that had carefully and deliberately applied bees to various sensitive parts of her anatomy, that had nailed her to a cross and left her to die.

When he'd come up from the basement with the stretcher that held Shana's unconscious body and he saw the well-dressed man he'd seen on the drone's video facing down Allie and Duke, he'd been momentarily snapped out of his numb shock to dark fury. He'd spent a long moment looking the man over, fixing each detail of face and figure into Snake Eyes' mind permanently. Someday…Snake Eyes didn't know when, but he was going to face that man again over what he'd done and the day he did one of them was not going to walk away from that confrontation.

Doc had listed in careful detail the types and amounts of drugs he'd found in Shana's system. The barbiturates Snake Eyes was aware of; had been expecting since Sandra's laboratory in the Congo had been well-equipped with those drugs; sodium pentothal, barbital, and other similar drugs. Other drugs were also expected; GHB, meth, roofies; Snake Eyes had been expecting those because Shana would have to be drugged before someone could rape her, she would never willingly submit to something like that.

But at the bottom of the list Doc had written in different colored ink that he'd found staggeringly high levels of a drug called Oxytocin, and an even more obscure drug called Anafranil. Snake Eyes felt his heart twist in his chest as he read Doc's analysis:

_Oxytocin is a hormone the human female body produces naturally to encourage receptiveness to a human male during efforts at procreation. However, when massive doses were injected into the patient's body they caused the patient to enter into a state of 'hypersexual excitation'. The anti-depressant drug Anafranil has, as one of its side effects, the ability to block the human body's perception of sexual fulfillment, and it is the opinion of this physician that these two drugs, when administered in such massive doses, were used to psychosexually torture the victim. As the victim also had birth-control implants that were conflicting with the drugs used, I have withdrawn the implants for now so that there will be no more conflicting hormones and the patient's body will be able to eventually stabilize the amounts of these hormones to no further ill effects._

Snake Eyes closed the folder, realized his hand was trembling, and closed his fist carefully to stop the involuntary movement as cold rage flooded him. He understood that dream now, understood why Shana had been so frustrated, and why Cam had done what she did. He'd deduced at the time that it was because of the drugs, but had no idea of the extent. _They wanted her to want them, wanted her willing, but she would never have done so deliberately so they drugged her._

He got up from the table, anger a dark mask on his face as he stepped out into the corridor. And then the need for physical movement took over, and he barely noticed as he increased his pace until he was running, his feet pounding out a steady rhythm as he traveled the corridors. Although they did have a gym, some of the Joes preferred old-fashioned-scenery-speeding-past, and so the corridors had been divided into a walking and a running lane, and it wasn't an unusual sight to see one of them jogging the corridors. Usually it was Snake Eyes, with Shana beside him, as they pounded up and down the exactly five miles of corridors here in their underground base; often it was Hawk and Flint, catching up on base business while they jogged; or Shana and Allie, and, more recently, Cam; they all knew by now that when Cam woke in the middle of the night with nightmares she'd either get up and go on a run to wear off the rest of the nervous energy before she went back to sleep, or she would take her swords to the dojo for practice until she was exhausted and then she went back to sleep.

Snake Eyes ran the five miles of base corridor once, then, still seething with rage, he ran it again. As he was in the middle of his third repetition, he heard voices in the corridor—Allie and Courtney—and he ducked into the dojo just so he wouldn't run into them, so they wouldn't see his sweat-soaked clothes and his shaking legs and decide he'd had enough. Not that they could order him to stop—but they were both perfectly capable of finding someone who could.

The rooms on base were all on motion sensors; the lights in individual rooms came on when someone entered the room, and turned off when there was no motion present. Snake Eyes paused for a moment, breathing hard, next to the door; then he saw his swords, his blades, sitting forgotten in a corner. He grabbed them and attacked one of the nearby target practice dummies in fury.

Again and again. No style, no forms, no grace, no control. Just sheer unbridled fury. When his swords went dull, when they lost their edge and couldn't do any more damage to the target dummy, he snatched a sword off the wall and attacked with that.

His body gave out before his fury did. The entire time she'd been gone, he'd barely eaten, barely slept; spent most of his time in a meditative trance trying to reach her, to somehow make her ordeal somehow better. All of that caught up with him now as his legs gave out under him, dumping him to his knees on the floor, staring dully at the carnage; target dummies hacked to pieces, wooden practice swords snapped and splintered, the swords that had been hanging on the wall snatched down, used, dulled, tossed aside.

He stared…and couldn't bring himself to care. As he slumped to the floor, anger drained out of him as suddenly as it had taken hold, and suddenly all he wanted was to see her. See her, touch her, feel her, know she was alive. But as he struggled to his feet, a wave of exhaustion hit him, and he staggered…and realized he'd be of no use to her until he'd showered and gotten some sleep.

He trudged off to Shana's quarters, stumbled blindly into the shower to quickly wash the sweat off, then just collapsed into bed. Sleep beckoned, and he gave into it, reassured that Shana would be there when he woke, and they'd handle her recovery…together. And since it was okay for Charlie to see Cam's medical, but Doc had to sneak around to give Snake Eyes a look at Shana's…well, there was a very easy fix to that too.

Charlie headed for his quarters, stripped off his uniform and got into the showers gratefully. He wanted to wash the stink of that place off him, wanted to wash it out of his hair, his clothes, off his skin.

Out of his mind was going to be harder. As he stood in the shower, the numbness of the trip wore off and slowly his emotions were coming back to him. The anguish he'd felt when he saw her, hanging by grotesquely dislocated shoulders; when he'd touched her, and she'd opened her eyes and seen him, and the way she'd cried his name had broken his heart. Her cries, the helpless exhausted sobbing of someone who had been in a lot of pain for far too long, had inspired a protective fury in him that he'd never known existed until he'd met her, and the memory of which brought tears to his own eyes.

Had he only met her half a year ago? Had it really only been August when the hurricane had ripped through the SERE training at Camp Mackall and he'd been part of the team that went to find Hawk? When he'd first seen her, barely conscious on the makeshift stretcher, half-nude and battered, he'd been appalled. When subsequent events showed her strength and resilience, her determination to keep going even when life kept knocking her over, his respect for her had grown. Allie and Shana coming to him and asking him to spend time with her, to break her out of her isolation and loneliness, had, for him, simply been a way to assuage his curiosity about their newest member—but curiosity turned to respect, respect turned to liking and then love, and while he couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when he realized he was in love with her, it was an undeniable fact that he was completely head over heels for her. It amused Frank Talltree to no end; Charlie had never been one to pay much attention to women, and Frank had predicted over the years that when Charlie did eventually fall, he'd fall hard. And his prediction had proved true.

Those few weeks up at Cam's New York cabin had been the happiest he could ever recall being. While he loved the Army, loved the military and believed in the goals and ideals it stood for, it had been the only thing that touched him that deeply, and he'd had no idea what he'd do if he wasn't in the military. No idea what direction his life would take if he ever mustered out. After having met Cam, his life had suddenly acquired direction, purpose, meaning; she was his reason for living, the one thing that made his life worthwhile. The one person—the only person—he could see spending the rest of his life with.

As he lay in bed, hair still damp from his shower, face wet with tears as he cried for her, at the thought of what she'd endured and would still endure through her recovery and the cleaning-up part of the mess that followed, he decided to himself that when it was all over, after Kennedy's trial and Yu's trial in the New York courts, he was going to talk her into leaving the military. She was content here, had told him she was happy, but on her reservation upstate he'd seen her truly happy, and he knew that she would never get that here. Not anymore. The majority of the people on base had been able to treat her as just another soldier until Shana had disappeared, but now their impressions of her were forever going to be tainted and she would never be 'ordinary'—even less so once her ordeal as Kennedy's slave became public knowledge—and it would, because both Cam and Shana would want justice served not only for themselves but for every victim Kennedy had ever enslaved and tortured and possibly killed. But in doing so, Cam would sacrifice every last hope she had for a normal life for herself in order to get justice for others, and it wasn't fair that the only thing she'd ever wanted, the only thing she'd ever asked for, would be denied her because of her own selfless nature.

Would he miss the military? Not really. Yes, he'd made friends here, but he had very few close friends. He'd always been a little aloof, not opening up to others easily, and out of everyone here, the only people he could really call close friends was Snake Eyes, who was even more aloof and unapproachable than Charlie himself; and Frank, his fellow Navajo brother. And if that was his choice, between Cam and his friends, Cam would be his choice. Now and forever.

Recovery was going to be hard; the trial was going to be harder. But after that, even if she got mad at him, no matter what he had to do, he would make sure she got that quiet ordinary life she so desperately wanted. And as if his mind just wanted him to come to that conclusion before it slept, the resolution was quickly followed by darkness.


	2. Chapter 63: Awake

**Chapter 63: Awake**

"Charlie…"

The soft whisper in the quiet of the infirmary woke Charlie from his half-doze in a chair beside Cam's bed. "I'm right here, baby," he whispered, gripping her hand in his own firmly but gently."I'm right here."

"Charlie…" her voice was hoarse from her ordeal and her voice was a faint croak, but her hand, curled around his, clutched it like she'd never let him go. "Charlie, I'm so sorry…you were right, this was harder than I thought it was going to be and I should have listened to you, oh God, I'm so sorry…forgive me…"

"It's okay, Cam, baby, it's okay. I'm not mad. There's nothing you need forgiveness for. You did what you thought you had to do to save Shana's life, and it all turned out okay—we have her back and she's safe. Just focus on getting better, now."

"I…don't feel anything right now. Comfortable and warm and sort of floating."

"I should hope you're comfortable now, I'm giving you enough painkillers to tranquilize an elephant." Doc came forward, smiling. "All right. I extracted the tracer chip behind your ear and sent that on to the tech team to be analyzed and decoded. You had major lacerations to your back and shoulders, but those were mostly superficial, doing a lot of external damage but not a lot of internal or subcutaneous damage. I did close a couple of gashes that were deep enough to require stitches, but those were few and some of them started to scab over and heal already. You had two dislocated arms/shoulders—I snapped your shoulders back into their sockets, but thankfully nothing else was torn and you didn't need surgery, so those bags of ice applied to your shoulders and painkillers should take that to a bearable level." He hesitated a brief moment, then sighed. "You took a considerable amount of damage between your legs; considerable tearing from forcible penetration, lots of bruising on thighs and knees and legs. Your chest however…" He sat on the end of the bed as Cam flinched. "I have to admit I was surprised by the sight of your chest. While the prosthesis isn't going to function, at least from here you look symmetrical and you will probably not need those mastectomy bras you wear."

"I…one of the people on the island, the dark-haired woman named Rosa—she cut squares of skin from my thigh when we first got there, cultured it, and then performed a skin graft over my breasts using that cultured skin. She said that usually pigskin was used on a graft, but for some people who are allergic skin cultured from human grafts works better."

"The problem is that enduring the painful process of stripping bits of skin to create those human tissue cultures is unethical," Doc said grimly, and Cam nodded as tears filled her eyes.

"She…skinned…me…" Gasping sobs didn't help the pain in her back and shoulders; she had to close her eyes momentarily to gain some composure back. She drew strength from the feel of Charlie's hand, wrapped around hers, to fight down her emotions at the memory of the hideous, horrific pain so that she could tell Doc what he needed to know. "She didn't use anesthetics or pain blockers when she took the tissue samples to culture, and when she did the graft she didn't use any anesthetics either. I was awake for both."

Doc's lips compressed in a firm line as wrote it down on a sheet of paper in her medical folder. "I'll note that here on the file. Now, in the meantime, I want to give you a couple of choices. You can stay here in the infirmary which, I'll admit, is getting crowded due to the presence of you, Shana, and Liv all in here at the same time plus a noisy crying baby that none of the women here seem to be able to soothe; or you can go back to the quarters you share with Charlie. Charlie, I am sure, isn't going to be anywhere but right next to you so if something goes wrong he'll be able to call me. I just think, at the moment, you'd welcome the privacy and peace and—" as if on cue, the crying of a baby started somewhere in the complex of rooms.

Doc rolled his eyes. "You'd welcome the privacy and peace and quiet of your own quarters. I can stop by once or twice a day, check on bandages and dressings, but basically right now you need rest, quiet, some time with your husband, a strict regimen of vitamins and painkillers, and whatever food you feel like eating." He leveled stern eyes at her. "When you first came to this base in August after SERE training, you were maybe one-ten. Over the succeeding weeks leading up to the surgery at Staten Island university Hospital, you gained about twenty-five pounds, then when you came back the doctor at Miramar forwarded your charts to me and I noticed that when you arrived at Miramar you were at eighty-nine pounds. By the time you left Miramar and came back here you were back to one-ten. When you and Charlie came back to base after your leave in Western New York, you were back to a healthy weight of one-thirty. Then when I weighed you prior to performing emergency surgery on you two days ago, you measured at just under one hundred. This business with your weight see-sawing all over the board is not healthy and I want you to build yourself up to about one-thirty."

He fixed that stern gaze on Charlie. "You are going to see that she eats. I realize in the beginning because of the amount and dosage of painkillers she's on she's not going to have much of an appetite, but she should have food available whenever she wants it, and you can consider yourself free to bring in whatever she might have a fancy for from off-base. Drink plenty of fluids, get lots of rest, and I'll make a house call once a day to check on your progress, change your dressings and adjust medication if I have to." He raised an eyebrow at her. "I see a question in there."

"How is Shana?" The anxious worry in her voice made Charlie swallow hard. "They drugged her pretty heavily with an awful lot of drugs. They didn't hurt her as badly as they hurt me, but I didn't see everything…they didn't let us stay together. Shana was…sort of Damien's personal property."

To his credit, Doc didn't try to reassure her, or gloss over what he'd learned of Shana's condition. "Shana was crucified. They whipped her and drove nails in her arms and crucified her. She was probably on that cross for about two days—roughly the same amount of time you were hanging in the boathouse, I surmise."

"Two days?" Cam's eyes filled with tears, and Charlie pressed her hand to his forehead to hide the tears her obvious anguish brought to his own eyes. "Two days…they were going to kill us."

"It…seems like a reasonable conclusion," Doc said carefully.

She wasn't listening. "On the island—they were trying to figure out how we knew each other, trying to get us to tell them who we were. Shana and I both figured that the moment we told them that they would kill us so we vowed to keep it a secret. And when I saw they were drugging her, I decided not to tell her about the tracer. I didn't tell her until actually just before they dragged me off to the boathouse…oh Goddess…she was furious with me because I didn't tell her, and the last words we spoke were harsh ones. She was angry with me, but I did what I thought I had to—if I died, they'd throw my body off the fishing platform like the others and my tracer would still lead you right to her."

"What do you mean, 'like the others'?"

"When they threw me in the water with my hands tied, I saw skeletons on the rock shelf underwater. Bodies. I thought a lot of them must have been former slaves that died or they decided to kill."

Doc scribbled a hasty note. "I'll tell Duke to notify the head of the FBI team that's scouring the island to check the seafloor under that fishing platform. Now, I think you need to get to your quarters and get some sleep…and no, Charlie, you are not going to carry her there."

The move was accomplished by the simple expedient of wheeling Cam's hospital bed out of the infirmary and down the halls to their quarters. She seemed considerably more comfortable when she was finally tucked into the bed she shared with Charlie and Doc removed the IV in her hand. "You've had enough of drugs, needles, and tubes," he said quietly, and she nodded quietly as she drifted off to sleep. Charlie and Doc stepped outside the room for a brief chat. "She's in too fragile a condition for a full debriefing, and even though her medical folder is self-explanatory, be on the lookout for any more hints like the one she just dropped in there about the bodies in the water. Let us know if she says anything else. And, Charlie…her recovery is going to be just as hard on you as it is on her. I'm here if you want to talk, or if you have any questions about anything, okay?"

Charlie nodded. "Thank you," he said simply, and disappeared back into the room.

Soft. Warm. No pain.

Green eyes opened to try and get a picture of the surroundings. Soft bed. Soft pillow. Soft warm blanket draped over a body that felt slightly numb. There was an ache between her legs, but that was fogged and kept at a distance.

Two figures. People. In the same room with her. Although her vision was blurred by drugs, pain, almost overwhelming hunger and thirst, she could make out one wearing white, a lab coat. She shuddered in unreasoning terror. Sometime not too far in the past someone dressed in white had done something horrible to her. As the two figures turned toward her, then came over to the bed, she gave a tiny harsh whimper of fear and cringed away from the white-clad figure, toward the black-clad one.

A memory stirred, all the way down in the bottom in her consciousness. Someone wearing black was her closest friend. The memory swam back sluggishly into the maelstrom of her mind before she could pull all the details from it, before she could put a name to the black-clad figure, but the impression it left behind was of trust. This black clad figure standing there was someone she could trust would never hurt her, would never force her to do something she didn't want to, wouldn't strap her down and stick her with needles and drug her. She threw up her arms in inarticulate protest as the white-clad figure came closer and tried to shift her aching, battered body closer to the black-clad figure, and in so doing she saw the needles and tubes in the back of her hand. She made a sound of inarticulate horror, then, and tried to rip the taped needle and tube out of her. _No more needles! No more drugs!_ She wanted to scream, but her voice was a harsh croak, her throat hurt, and even though something inside was telling her that the black-clad figure was to be trusted, she was still wary, still unsure whether it would all turn out to be a dream, another drug-induced hallucination, and she would wake up to a hard floor and rock walls. And…there was something she was supposed to keep a secret, something she wasn't supposed to say. She couldn't remember it now, but she did remember it had been important, and so for now it was better for her not to say anything at all.

The dark-clad figure caught her wrists, and she succumbed to the touch. That stirred another memory, those hands, with their callused fingertips and gentle, sure touch, holding hands with her, wrapping fingers around hers as they showed her how to hold a sword; she didn't try to jerk away from those fingers as her mind tried to make sense of the conversation being held over her head.

"She's having a very bad reaction to my touching her. I don't want to send her into a panic attack, can you take the IV out of her hand before she rips it out herself? I'm guessing this is a knee-jerk reaction to it—she's probably had so many needles stuck into her over the last two months that she simply panics when she sees them. The insides of her elbows are purple with the injections she's taken."

The black-clad figure dropped to a crouch in front of her, and now her blurry eyes could see him clearly. Scarred face, wheat-blond hair, sure, gentle touch. He didn't speak, didn't say a word, just looked at her, blue eyes into her green and again that feeling of trust crept into her conscious mind. So she didn't lash out at him when he took the edges of the tape holding her IV needle down and started to pull it up; she didn't even wince when his gentle but inexpert fumbling tugged a little. But the pad of clean white gauze those hands pressed to the back of her hand stopped bleeding and brought comfort, the tape applied over it held it in place, and the strong, gentle callused hands held hers after the whole operation was done. It frustrated her a little that she couldn't remember who this was, but instinct told her he was completely trustworthy and her mind, fuzzy from pain medication, accepted what her instinct told her.

The white-clad figure was talking again, but the owner of the voice didn't seem to be talking to her, so she ignored it. As long as it didn't bring her pain… The dark-clad figure held her closely, cradled her, and she felt warm and protected and…safe…in his arms, and she closed her eyes and just drifted.

"She's in what's called a benign stupor," Doc said in response to Snake eyes' questioning, half-frightened look. "Her system's suffered a tremendous shock, she's been raped, drugged, tortured, and nearly died. Right now her conscious mind has shut down while it's trying to process everything that's happened to her, and it's pretty much just left her with vague memory and instinct. And no, there's no way for me to predict when she'll come out of it."

He looked troubled. "Snake Eyes, I can give you two options. I can keep her here under heavy sedation until she's healed fully and all the drugs are out of her system, or I can let her go with you to her quarters. But you have to stay with her; she's lucid right now but very shortly she's going to go some very nasty withdrawal symptoms. Fever, chills, vomiting, weakness, periods of unconsciousness. She has very high levels of some illegal drugs in her bloodstream, and while normally I'd keep her here and give her gradually declining doses to bring her down off them gently, she's panicking at the very sight of needles and drugs and short of strapping her down and forcibly injecting her, there's no way I could do that. And strapping her down and forcibly injecting her would do more harm to her psyche than just going cold turkey with you to help her.

"It's not going to be pleasant and it's not going to be easy, and once you've decided to do this I don't think we'll be able to get her back in the infirmary in this state she's in. Right now your bond with her is the only thing she has to consciously hang on to, and if you broke that by holding her down for me to inject, I can't guarantee that we're not going to lose her—her mind will shut down altogether and we'll lose her."

Snake Eyes was horrified at the very thought. _If helping her throw up will keep me from losing her I'll do it. I can't lose her. I…couldn't survive losing her. Not like that. _The thought of Shana sitting in a chair in a mental hospital somewhere, a blank-eyed, mindless husk of the beautiful, vibrant woman she'd once been, squeezed his heart in an icy fist. _I can't lose her. I can't. If I lose her I'll die too._

He didn't have to speak. His eyes said everything that needed to be said as his arms tightened around the woman he loved more than life itself. And Doc knew it too, and he saw the resolution in Snake Eyes' face, in every line of his body, and he prayed, as he started to make the arrangements to get Shana tucked into her quarters on base, that she would pull through, that she would make it.

The new room she was in felt cozy and familiar and comforting. She knew where everything was, knew where the most comfortable spot in this particular bed was. Knew just how to curl up in the warm darkness of the middle of the bed and find the places where the mattress conformed to her body.

Knew where the black-clad figure who was her only connection to reality was going to lie down, was going to stretch out. Knew how he was going to arrange himself around her, curl around her, and she smiled in blissful delight at the warm, soft, safe feeling she had now. Nothing would hurt her here, nothing would touch her, and she felt the smile remain on her face as she drifted into sleep. Real sleep, not exhausted, drug-fogged unconsciousness, but gentle, healing, deep, dreamless sleep.

Snake Eyes curled around the warm ball under the covers, eyes stinging with tears. Even in this stupor, she'd known how they usually slept together, had automatically taken her usual spot on the bed designed to leave him room to slip in next to her. The smile on her face had, for one heart-stopping moment, looked so much like her that his heart skipped a beat. But no, when her eyes opened, they were still blank, although he could see an echo of Shana in the way her body fit against his. And that little flash, those little unconscious movements he'd taken for granted before—even had been a source of irritation sometimes, because damn it, how did she know him so well? But now they were hints that Shana was still there, still inside, and as he finally drifted into sleep with her curled against him, he clung to the hope that their love would bring through this, too, as it had brought them through so much else in their lives.


	3. Chapter 64: Debriefing

**Chapter 64: Debriefing**

Flint studied Allie and Duke as they came to a stop at the other side of General Hawk's desk and saluted.

"At ease," he said kindly, and they both relaxed. They both looked like they'd been through hell, even though he'd saved the debriefing until after they'd both gotten a day's sleep; Allie was a little pale, and Duke looked downright haggard. Understandable, once you knew that Conrad and Shana had had a fling in the past—Flint had never asked for details, had never wanted them; it was their business, and as long as it didn't interfere with the current working partnerships he really didn't care—but there had been close calls in the past when, like now, he wondered just how deep their affection had run.

And now this. "Report," he said crisply, his matter-of-fact tone telling them he wanted facts now, reactions later.

And they, as good soldiers did, pushed their personal feelings aside and gave him the reports he needed. "We met up with the Columbia in Fiji, came aboard only a few hours before Snake Charlie, and the med team. We briefed the captain on what was going on—we figured it was okay because none of this has been classified. The humanitarian mission into the DRC when Scarlett was captured wasn't common knowledge but it wasn't classified so I thought it was okay." There was a very slight hint of a questioning note in Duke's voice.

Flint answered it with a wave of his hand. "Go on." The fact that he didn't make it an issue was a signal that it was okay, and he saw Duke's shoulders slump slightly in relief.

Allie took up the thread of their story. "We told the captain everything; about Shana's capture and that Cam went deep cover to try and find her with an implanted tracer, and we showed him the footage our drones brought back. He was appalled and horrified, and when time came to assault the island, he gave us a helicopter, put practically all the troops he had on a second one, then packed the Homeland Security guy and the two FBI witnesses in a third helicopter with extra gear he claimed might be needed." A tiny smile curved her lips. "Even though the drone flyover showed there'd be just barely enough room for two of the larger military helicopters on that landing pad. The helicopter holding the Naval assault troopers landed first, then our helicopter, and then the troopers helicopter had to take off to allow the third helicopter with the 'extra gear' and the one DHS suit and the two FBI guys to land. And by the time they landed we were already spreading out around the island and all they could do was follow along."

Flint had to smile. "I'll bet they weren't happy about that."

"No. They weren't. But we didn't really care." Allie took a deep breath. "The drone flyovers showed a large lagoon in the center of the top of the island—an old volcanic crater, I assume—and there was a small boathouse near that lagoon. That's where we found Cam." Her voice broke, and she took a deep breath to steady herself. Flint felt his heart twist in his chest; she was a soldier, and it was her responsibility to debrief him, but she was also a woman, and Cam was her friend. He had a feeling he was going to spend the evening holding her as she cried.

But she was a consummate professional and she would carry out her responsibilities first. "They …they tied her wrists together and…hung her…from a beam in the boathouse…and then tied weights to her ankles and just…let her hang. By the time we got to her she'd been hanging for a couple of days and her arms dislocated from the strain. I—she screamed—while Charlie and Snake Eyes got her down." She closed her eyes, shook her head as if to dispel the image behind her eyes. "But she did manage to tell us of 'torture chambers' under the island's mansion where we could find Shana just before Stretcher gave her a shot to put her in a medically-induced coma just to take away her pain so he could treat her. I stayed with her, Duke went with Snake Eyes to get Shana."

Flint turned to Duke, and saw the younger man take a deep breath before he spoke. "The son of a bitch we saw in the video throwing Cam off the fishing platform had Shana crucified," he said flatly, holding in strong emotion. Beside him, Allie took a sobbing breath, close to breaking down herself at the hideous memory, and Flint felt his own jaw dropping open at the callous cruelty such an action implied. "She was whipped—not as badly as Cam was whipped, but enough to make her bleed—and then crucified. They placed the nails very carefully so as to miss the major blood vessels and muscles and nerves in her arms, so I guess we can argue that that means they didn't intend to let her die, but what they did was bad enough they placed bees against her skin, let the bees sting her."

Flint felt bile rise in his throat. Bee stings were painful, horrible things, and thank god Shana wasn't allergic to them. "Jesus," and he heard his voice crack.

"The cross had a wooden piece that stuck out of it. And that piece..." Allie couldn't do it. Couldn't say it. Couldn't talk about her fellow soldier and friend's body that way. "I'm sorry. You'll have to read the medical report."

"I'll do that." Just to spare his lover and his friend from having to endure this horrible debriefing. "Lieutenant General Johnson gave me the details of your return, so I'd say this debriefing is over. Get some rest, Conrad." His use of the other man's name told Conrad he was no longer on duty, and Conrad's shoulders slumped as he nodded wearily and trudged out of the room, each step leaden and heavy.

As soon as the door was closed Allie was in Dash's arms, crying as if she would never stop, and Dash leaned back against the desk and just held her. He couldn't imagine what she'd gone through, as a woman, seeing the brutality done to two other women who were also close friends and fellow soldiers. "It was horrible. Oh God, Dash, this has been the hardest—Cam's lessons, the slave market, and then getting to the island and seeing just how brutal one human being can be to another—the whole thing just makes me so sick!"

"I do too, sweetheart. I do too." He patted her back in soothing circles, trying to empathize, but away down in the back of his mind, a selfish little voice whispered, if you hadn't forbidden Allie from coming it could have been her. Be glad it wasn't her. And while he felt guilty, he couldn't deny that he was, indeed, glad that it wasn't her.

"I need some good news. How have things been here? Has Liv woken up yet? Is Auggie doing okay?"

Flint shook his head regretfully. "No, Liv hasn't woken up yet. Doc's keeping an eye on her but he says she was horribly traumatized and he's not too concerned. When Auggie came out he pretty much ripped her open—some of the scar tissue gave and once that tear was there everything just tore open. She hemorrhaged out half her blood before he managed to get the bleeding stopped, and he had to give her massive transfusions. Clayton even donated blood—he has the same blood type she does. Doc says if she comes out of it naturally before he takes the stitches out of her body, he'll deal, but he's hoping she stays asleep until after the stitches come out. If she reinjures anything at this point it could be fatal."

Allie was now sniffling quietly in his arms; good, he'd gotten her distracted. "And Auggie?"

Flint grinned; this was going to distract Allie completely. "Doc swears he will never ever allow babies in his infirmary again. Clayton's been sitting by Liv's bedside almost constantly, so when Auggie wakes up in the middle of the night Clayton's there to hold him and soothe him and give him a bottle and rock him back to sleep. But when he's exhausted and sleeping, Alex and Courtney are taking turns trying to babysit the little guy and both women swear that they must have no motherly instinct whatsoever because nothing they do works. The bottle only works for a little bit; once he's full he just starts howling, and it's virtually impossible to hush him up. The only good thing about it is that Doc's been seeing a radical drop in the number of non-emergency cases among the guys—none of them want to be responsible for waking the little guy up and setting him off again."

That got a weak laugh out of Allie, as he'd known it would. "So I guess I'm going to be drafted into a round of baby-sitting?" she chuckled. "Hey, be good practice when we have one."

"We?" Flint's brain skidded to a stop at that last declaration. "We're going to _what_?"

"We're eventually going to have one of those. You know. A baby. Little pink and white thing, cries, poops a lot, half you and half me. Yes, we are eventually going to have one." Allie grinned cheerfully at his stunned look. "So I guess I might as well get some practice, right?" She dropped a kiss on his cheek. "I'll see you later."

Auggie regarded this new face with suspicion, but the introduction of a bottle distracted him. By the time he was full, changed, wrapped snugly in a blanket (correctly—the 'instructions' Courtney had found on the internet consisted of a homemade video and a plastic doll, and had little to do whatsoever with trying to comfortably support a real baby's arms and legs. Courtney stared at Allie in awe as Auggie decided he was much happier with this new babysitter and hiccupped, then settled down to do some serious thinking—awake and quiet.

"There, you see? It's not that hard." Allie grinned as she lifted Auggie to her shoulder and bounced gently on the balls of her feet. Auggie gurgled and settled deeper into Allie's shoulder. "Gosh, he's like what, just under two weeks old now? He feels like he weighs a ton!"

"Doc said he was a big baby. After all the fuss was over and Liv was stabilized and out of emergency surgery and Doc had a chance to weigh him, turned out he was a little over eight pounds. Like eight pounds and some ounces. And he's been gaining weight rapidly." Courtney shook her head as she stared at Auggie. "He's quiet. He's never quiet unless it's Clayton holding him. Wow." She looked at Allie hopefully. "You wouldn't…want to take over all the babysitting duties permanently would you? Just until Liv wakes up?"

"Oh no. Absolutely not. Hey, you and Wayne might someday have kids of your own, think of this as practice—"

Courtney shook her head so hard her blond locks flew around her head. "Nuh-uh. No. Not happening. I'm not having kids. The world's overpopulated enough as it is."

Allie grinned. "That might change as you get older. Wait and see, okay?" She took Auggie off her shoulder, looked at him affectionately. "You know, I see some of his Mama in him, but overall he looks so much like Clayton—look at those blue eyes!" She ruffled the short brown curls. "The hair he gets from his Mom, I'll bet."

"He was born with a full head of hair. I was surprised; I thought all babies were born bald." Courtney grinned. "Doc said his eyes are probably going to change to brown later, but I'm kind of hoping they'll stay blue. He's so absolutely adorable with blue eyes—" She broke off and winced as Auggie decided he didn't like being talked about and protested—vociferously.

Allie sighed. "Come on, let's find somewhere to put you down for a nap," she said quietly, and the two women left Courtney's quarters. They quickly carried Auggie past Shana's door, worried that she could be sleeping and they didn't want him to start howling suddenly and wake her.

It was well into the base's 'night' and a lot of the Joes were asleep, so they headed for a quieter, less-inhabited spot. Duke was in the gym, working out; Allie gave him a quick nod, knowing that he had gone through just as much on this trip as she had, but unlike her, he didn't have anyone to go to for comfort. Usually when Duke was feeling bad he went to talk to Shana, but with Shana currently unavailable, Allie and Court guessed that he was taking refuge in sheer physical activity. Allie was going to talk to him, but she wanted to give him some time to decompress before she did.

"Let's hit the dojo. It's going to be quiet now; Snake Eyes is wrapped up with Shana and it'll be empty." She put her hand on the doorknob, opened the door.

And they stared.

The normally excruciatingly neat dojo was a shambles. Pieces of wooden practice swords were snapped and splintered, kicked aside and another one used until it snapped. While most of the weapons were functional, there were a few that weren't, courtesy of Shana, who had taken to collecting beautiful and unusual decorative swords. A lot of those were now dented, bent, blades nicked, hilts broken. Those swords had never been designed to handle the fury of a ninja whose world had been turned upside down, a man whose soulmate had been horribly tortured, in the worst ways a woman could be hurt. Those swords that had been designed for practical use lay on the floor in the corners of the dojo, blades dulled, carelessly dropped and not cleaned and re-sheathed. Since Snake Eyes was usually such a stickler for taking care of weapons after practice or use, the fact that he hadn't told Allie and Courtney all too well what his state of mind had been.

And the fact that none of the four practice dummies was still standing anymore was another clue. It seemed like there wasn't a piece of those dummies left that was any bigger than a grain of rice; each one had been systematically cut down to a pile of nearly-unidentifiable rubble.

"Snake Eyes," Courtney said after their first shocked look. "He's the only one who's been in here since—since we all came back from the Congo."

Duke had noticed them standing in the doorway to the dojo and not going in, and he came loping across the gym floor now. Allie heard a hiss of indrawn breath as he stopped next to them and saw the wreckage of the dojo. "Snake Eyes," he said quietly. "He's the only one who would have been able to do this."

Ignoring Courtney's 'no, really?' eyeroll, Allie stepped into the dojo after Duke, who bent almost mechanically and picked up the first sword he saw. "See if you can find the saya to match this," he said quietly to her.

"What's a saya?" Courtney asked, and Allie had to suppress an eyeroll of her own. Early on, Shana had gotten frustrated by Courtney's seeming inability to handle a sword and had never bothered trying to teach the blond tank jockey after that. Courtney's instruction from Shana had concentrated on physical fitness and basic hand-to-hand unarmed combat moves; in another few months she was looking at a promotion from Corporal Krieger to Specialist Krieger, which was going to pretty much take her off the infantry mission roster (the list of those who could go out when sheer numbers mattered, which didn't happen often anyway) and let her focus on her darlings; the Joes' vehicles. It was clearly where her talents lay and where she was happiest, and it was certainly a needed, important, valuable skill; some of the improvements she'd designed for the Joes last year had been picked up during their annual review by Lieutenant General Johnson and had been implemented as a test on several active combat fronts elsewhere in the military. Those tests had been completely successful in the last year, and it was a near-certainty that those improvements would be integrated into future vehicle designs—which meant she'd get that promotion to Specialist.

And meant that chances for her to need to get into unarmed combat were going to be few and far between, so Shana, realizing that, hadn't really pushed her into learning more than the basics. Which meant she was clueless to swordwork. Not that Allie was all that good, herself; her specialty weapon was the javelin, and while it had given her the upper-body strength needed for swordwork, swords simply weren't her thing. She tried to learn, sensing that Shana would like a friend who liked some of the same things she had, but when Cam had come along and Shana had said she wanted to focus on practice with Cam, Allie had breathed a sigh of relief and quietly bowed out of the whole sword-wielding business. When Shana finally said, somewhat guiltily, that she was sorry she'd been neglecting Allie's sword practice, Allie had laughed at her and assured her that she hadn't missed a bit. And that was the last Allie had heard of that.

"A saya is a scabbard. The sheath that the sword blade sits in."

"Oh." Courtney looked at the littler of swords and sword pieces on the floor of the room and said, "But how do you know which one goes to what sword?"

Allie rolled her eyes and handed the now-sleeping Auggie to Courtney. "I'll handle this. You take him back to his crib and put him to sleep."


	4. Chapter 65: Snake Eyes

**Chapter 65: Snake Eyes**

Snake Eyes came instantly awake.

Not the fogged, claw-his-way-to-consciousness awake that he'd been experiencing for the last two months. This time he went from deep sleep to instant wakefulness, and the moment he opened his eyes he knew what—and who—had woken him.

Shana was trying to climb out of bed. She was trying, without much success, because her legs were shaking so hard she could barely stand. She took a few steps and tumbled to the floor, tried to regain her feet, and couldn't.

Oh God, it hurt to see Shana, his beautiful, vibrant, graceful, agile, coordinated Shana looking so clumsy and awkward, trying so hard (and still failing) to get to her feet. He was out of bed in a moment, beside her, wanting to help her but unsure what she was doing or what her goal was. He reached down and his fingers brushed the side of her cheek.

She flung herself backward so fast she nearly hit her head on the leg of the desk, scrambling backward in a panicked crabwalk, mouth open in a silent scream as she tried desperately to avoid his touch. And as she lost her balance and fell over backwards, he saw the glazed eyes, dilated pupils, and dry mouth that signified the beginning of the drug withdrawal.

He slapped the light switch against the wall, flooding the room with light, and dropped to a crouch in front of her, wishing, with all his heart, that he had a voice and could reach her, somehow, in this state she was in. If she didn't have anything to anchor her to reality, she could slip away altogether, he would lose her, and dear God, but it would kill him if he lost her like that. Instead of a voice, though all he had was himself, and he prayed now that this would be enough. The room was bright enough that she could see it was him, and not some random attacker.

She squinted up at him, and he reminded himself that the next time she fell asleep he was going to find a lightbulb with a softer light, lower wattage, something a little dimmer. It was too bright for her drug-glazed eyes, and as he reached down she brought her hands up in an automatic 'don't hurt me gesture'.

He couldn't stand to see her like that. Couldn't stand to see her flinch away from the one person who swore that he would never, ever hurt her. He caught her hands firmly but gently, pulling her into a tight hug as he tried desperately not to cry. _Shana, Shana, I'm so sorry, please, Baby, I'm so sorry…_

And then, astonishingly, he felt the stiff, rigid form in his arms melt against him, felt her grab him and try to climb to her feet using him as her support. She wasn't afraid of him, then; on some level she recognized him as someone who would help her, and he got to his feet, throwing her arm across his shoulders and ducking under her arm, and as she took a halting, lurching step, he figured out where she'd been so desperate to go.

The bathroom.

He took her the rest of the way there, then held her swaying, unsteady form upright on the seat as she did what she had to. In the harsh, bright light he winced at the swollen red masses that had once been a pair of creamy, soft, fair-skinned, lightly-freckled, perfect breasts; then he shuddered when he looked further down. Doc's medical report said it was going to take a couple of days for the swelling to go down completely, and he could well imagine what kind of pain she'd be suffering now if the drug withdrawal hadn't completely engulfed her.

She had enough presence of mind to wipe herself before she got up—not that Snake Eyes would have balked at doing something so personal for her, but she'd be humiliated if she found out later. He did reach out and flush, then they turned to make their way across the bedroom to get her back to bed.

She froze about halfway there, squinting at the corner of her room, then with a groan she pulled away from him and tried to make it to the corner of the room. He dropped to his knees beside her, alarmed, wondering what could have attracted her attention…and his unspoken question was answered as she reached for the end of a shirt hanging from the dirty laundry basket.

_Clothes!_ It hit him like a board over the head. Clothes. She probably hadn't had clothes the entire time she'd been gone—the skimpy costume she'd been wearing in the drone's video didn't even come close to his idea of clothing—and his military training reminded him that when an enemy caught you, they'd try to dehumanize you by taking your clothes away. Maybe if she got something to put on, something to wear, it would help her start to shake this stupor she was in…he crossed his fingers as he crossed the room quickly, grabbed one of her own t-shirts from a drawer..and then hesitated. Panties, she'd probably feel better with some underwear, but with her sex as badly swollen and hurting as it was (she'd grimaced in pain as she sat on the toilet, and he didn't even want to think about how much eliminating must have hurt on raw tissue) it would probably be better if she didn't wear them. But…she'd feel more human…

Over in one corner Shana kept a spare set of his clothes, in case he spent the night in her quarters and woke up too late to sneak back to his quarters to clean up and change. A t-shirt and a pair of boxers, and he grabbed those boxers with relief. The perfect solution…and he turned and winced.

As he'd been grubbing around in her drawer trying to find something for her to wear, she'd solved that problem herself. The shirt she'd grabbed out of the hamper was one of his, a t-shirt that he'd slept in, sweated in, had nightmares in while she was gone. But even if it smelled, it hadn't mattered to her; she'd popped it over her head and was now sitting on the floor next to the hamper with her fists balled in the front of the shirt, her face buried in the front. He was about to protest when he understood; the shirt smelled like him. Somewhere down inside her broken mind, she must remember the nights she'd lain in his arms naked and sweaty after making love to him. The shirt smelled like him, and as he watched her carefully, a tiny, tight smile crossed her face and her lips moved. _Snake Eyes_.

His name on her lips; although she didn't speak aloud, the fact that she'd made the connection between his scent on that shirt and him gave him a wild leap of hope. Crossing the room, he hauled her now unresisting form across the room and sat her on the edge of the bed, then reached down to put the boxers on over her legs—once strong and tanned and muscular and oh so delightful when she wrapped them around his waist, now thin and bruised, with traces of dried blood and filth on her skin. She needed a shower, and he was about to pull her upright and do that when he looked at her face and realized she was a bare few minutes from slipping into sleep again. So he skipped the shower idea and pulled the boxers on, and with that tiny bit of her humanity restored, she slipped back into sleep.

He stretched her out on the bed—the middle of the bed, this time; he didn't intend on getting back into it with her for a little while. He'd heard reveille played over the base's speakers in the hallway a short time ago, and that meant base was on 'day' shift—and he wanted to ask Doc why Shana had had such a bad reaction to him touching her face.

He ran a hand through his hair, grimaced; he was overdue for a shower himself, and a shave—and yes, his stomach was growling and for the first time in weeks he actually felt hungry. So he was regaining a little bit of his humanity, too...and the thought brought a twitch to his lips. His memories of the two previous months were a blur, but he could well imagine the base's shock and distress on seeing him unshaven, wild—and he'd completely neglected his duties as far as recruit training went. He vaguely remembered Flint telling him that Hawk was getting him to supervise it, but hadn't paid much attention at the time.

And until Shana was back to being 'herself', it would wait. She was his one and only overriding concern at the moment, and possible discipline for neglecting his duty didn't matter to him at the moment.

He detoured from his path to the infirmary to see Doc and stepped into the gym. There were a couple of people working out, Duke included on a treadmill near the door of the dojo. He nodded to the other man and headed for the dojo, sighing as he thought about the cleanup he was faced with now that his initial fury was spent.

And stopped short.

The dojo was clean. The swords were picked up and re-sheathed and hung on the walls, the remains of the practice dummies had been swept up and disposed of, and everything looked basically the way it should. There were some empty spots on the walls, however; but most of those were the decorative swords that Shana collected, the ones that were never meant to be used or wielded by a furious ninja. He'd always been disdainful of those—what good was a sword if you couldn't use it, after all, and why would you even want to have a sword around that couldn't be used?

He reached up to the nearest one on the wall, noting as he did that it was sheathed in the wrong saya. Whoever had put the dojo back together had gotten most of the swords into most of the right sheaths, but there were just a few that weren't right, and he walked around the dojo now, correcting the mistakes, until the sound of a throat clearing brought his eyes up to the door.

Conrad stood there. "I…we…Allie and I…we saw the mess in here and we tried to clean up for you," he said awkwardly, and Snake Eyes felt a wave of empathy. Shana had been very important to Conrad too, and while Snake Eyes was relieving his worry and frustration by taking care of Shana, Conrad had no outlet for it, no one with whom to vent. "We tried to get most of them in the right sheaths but I guess we missed a few." He walked quietly over to the pile of swords that Snake Eyes was matching sheaths with, looked down at the pile of abused weaponry. "Allie said she was going to try and find duplicates for some of the decorative swords that Shana bought for the dojo, so that's where the swords for those missing spots went. Allie has them in her quarters. We're going to try and replace them. I know you didn't really like them because they weren't functional, but…" he shrugged helplessly. "Shana liked them."

Snake Eyes felt about two inches tall. _Shana liked them_. Conrad and Allie would replace something he'd broken—and he remembered his fury when one of those decorative swords snapped, remembered him hurling the broken pieces aside as useless and a waste of time and space—but Conrad, of all people, understood that they were useful because Shana liked them. And her being happy with them was more important than Snake Eyes' disapproval of their non-functionality. It gave Snake Eyes a little more insight into the woman he loved but hadn't really _known_; while not something she'd deliberately kept secret, like she'd kept her MOS a secret, like he'd kept his real name a secret, Snake Eyes' own unwillingness to open his eyes and truly put an effort into understanding the complex person behind those beautiful green eyes had made the inner workings of her mind a secret from him. But others had seen it, recognized it. While a decorative sword wasn't useful as far as physically wielding it, it was useful for making the woman he loved happy. And even he had to admit that some of the ones Shana had found were beautiful; some piece of intricate ornamentation, a unique color of wrapping, a filigreed tsuba.

He put down the sword he was holding, went to Conrad, held out a hand, palm out, empty. And unspoken apology, a thanks, an approval; he didn't specify, and a moment later when Conrad took his hand, gripped it, and gave it a firm squeeze, the understanding was there between the two of them that no explanation was needed, no apology necessary. That Snake Eyes finally understood what Conrad had known all along; it didn't matter if it was functional as long as it made Shana happy.

They both bent to the task of matching the remaining swords to the correct sheaths.

Dojo cleanup completed (and with Snake Eyes promising to chip in to replace those swords he'd broken) he resumed his trip to the medlabs. Doc wasn't there when he got there; fortunate, because he would have had a fit at the sound of a howling baby coming from the medlabs. When Snake Eyes rounded the corner and walked in, the first thing he saw was Auggie, kicking his feet and pumping tiny fists in the air and having a royal temper tantrum that very closely echoed his father's legendary (although usually very tightly restrained) temper. Snake Eyes chuckled to himself, grinning as he crossed the medlabs and picked up the baby.

He'd been so wrapped up in misery while Shana was missing that he'd only known intellectually that Auggie had been born and Olivia was in a coma. Now, as he held the wiggling, kicking, pink and white baby, the miracle of his being there kicked in and the broad smile that crossed his face, seldom seen by anyone but Shana, made Auggie smile back, stop kicking and stop crying.

"Is he—" came a voice from the intensive care unit, and a moment later Clayton appeared in the doorway.

Snake Eyes' first thought was _he looks terrible_. Clayton hadn't shaved in a while; the stubble on his chin was testimony to that. Snake Eyes had vaguely heard someone say that he'd started his leave and Flint had taken over the day-to-day running of the base, but only now, looking at Major General Abernathy and seeing the wreckage of the man, did Snake Eyes realize that Auggie's birth and Liv's coma had been just as hard on Clayton as Shana's disappearance and reappearance had been on him. And seeing what his commanding officer looked like now left no room for doubt that, even in the short time they'd known each other, a bond had formed between the police detective and the General and while they might not be ready to get married, theirs was a bond every bit as deep and strong as Snake Eyes' and Shana's.

Clayton crossed the room now, steps slow, looking tired, as Snake Eyes cradled the baby in his arms, slipping the nipple of a nearby half-finished bottle into his mouth. Auggie hiccupped and applied himself and his attention to the bottle as Clayton stopped, looking at the tableau; the black-clad ninja holding a quietly contented baby.

"He likes you. When Alex and Court come in to pick him up, he howls for a good ten minutes before he takes his bottle. He likes Allie a little more, but he still doesn't quiet for her right away."

Snake Eyes grinned at Auggie. He couldn't help it; the short dark curls and the wide blue eyes studied him seriously, as if Auggie was thinking—seriously—about this new babysitter and trying to decide if he liked this new face or not.

"Liv's okay," Clayton said, anticipating Snake Eyes' next question. "She's still in a light coma, but she does have active brainwave patterns and Doc says that for all intents and purposes, she's just sleeping rather deeply while her body gets over the shock. Doc gave her two pints of our stored A-positive plasma, and then I donated a couple of units that Doc put in her. So she has my blood in her veins now; that's a sobering thought." He gave Snake Eyes a wan smile. "And Doc also says that there will be no repeat of this; she's not going to get pregnant again. You know, growing up an only child, I always wished I had brothers or sisters, but my parents never obliged. And then I thought that when I had kids, I wanted at least two. But now, seeing him—and knowing what Liv went through just to have August—I don't want anymore." His voice broke. "I don't want her to have anymore if they're going to kill her."

Snake Eyes just nodded quietly. There was nothing he could say to that. He wanted kids, true; and he wanted them with Shana. But with the damage her body had taken, he didn't know if she could—or if, after what happened, she'd even ever want to have sex again. If she didn't want it, he wouldn't pressure her on it. She'd been forced enough, and after some of what he'd felt as bleed-through from their bond, Jesus, he really wouldn't blame her if she never ever wanted to touch or be touched by a man again. Snake Eyes wouldn't if it had been him. Yes, she looked to him for comfort now, because even above the sex and the lovers aspect of their relationship, they had been, first and foremost, friends. And he hoped fervently that that wouldn't change.

"If you're looking for Doc, he's making a house call to Cam and Charlie's quarters. I 'm pretty sure you didn't come here just to hold my son." Clayton stepped forward and took a now sleepily-hiccupping Auggie from Snake Eyes' arms. Auggie protested, opening one eye, but when he saw it was his father, he hiccupped drowsily and closed his eyes again. "Doc wanted to give them privacy, and God knows Cam needed it, so if you came here looking for him, that's where he went."

Snake Eyes nodded and left the medlabs, still feeling the weight of a baby in his arms. _I would have liked to have children with Shana. But if she doesn't want them now, then neither do I. _He shook his head to dispel the image of a little girl with his own blue eyes and Shana's red hair. _Let's just concentrate on getting through each day. Right now I want to find Doc and ask him about her panic attack earlier._

He strode off toward Charlie and Cam's quarters.


	5. Chapter 66: Cam

**Chapter 66: Cam**

He didn't even give it a thought. He simply tapped three times on the door, then opened it.

And froze.

Doc was there; Charlie and Cam were there. But he'd chosen the wrong moment to walk in, because what he saw…

He didn't think they'd seen him; he quickly stepped back and closed the door, very quietly, and leaned against the wall, eyes stinging with unshed tears. Oh God. Doc had made a house call to change Cam's dressings and adjust her meds, that much he'd known. It was what he'd seen when he'd opened the door that made his eyes tear up.

When he'd helped Charlie get Cam down from the boat winch in the boathouse he'd been focused on 'rescue' and finding Shana had been at the forefront of his thoughts. He'd taken little notice of Cam except for the thought, _she looks really bad_. But she'd been able to speak, able to give them directions on where to find Shana, and partly because of that, he hadn't realized just how _really_ bad she looked.

He closed his eyes, wishing that he hadn't walked in on them like that, but was now unable to erase that image from his mind. She was a skeleton with skin; while she'd always been slender, due to the fire that had scarred her having taken away her ability to store body fat under her skin, and she'd never weighed much—he remembered Shana sitting in bed one night reworking Cam's diet and calorie requirements to allow her to gain some fat and muscle so she could progress in her sword practice with Shana. But now she looked like a concentration camp survivor; Shana, though she'd been missing for longer than Cam had been gone—a whole month—was in much better shape now than Cam was after two weeks. A lot of that, he knew, was because Shana was worth more in a slave market than Cam was—and that fact sickened him; who could judge how much a person was worth, over any other person? But at the same time, he was glad Shana wasn't in as bad a shape as Cam was—seeing how Shana was reacting now, he wasn't sure that anything harsher, anything more brutal, wouldn't have shattered her.

He wasn't sure if Shana would have survived what had happened to Cam. Behind his eyes, he could see the mountain of blood-stained bandages that Doc had peeled from Cam's back, and the raw, festering mess that had lain under it—cuts, old and new, layered on top of bruises in various stages of healing, most of them raw-looking, swollen, and clearly infected. Her face was contorted in a grimace of agony as she'd tried to hold in her cries of pain. Charlie had been standing in front of her, letting her lean against his solid bulk as she stood to let Doc change the dressings across her lower back and upper thighs, and he'd been holding her hands; not, as it would have appeared, just to give her support and encouragement, but also to keep her from involuntarily lashing out at Doc. True, he was trying to help, but the amount of pain she was experiencing produced involuntary movement and she simply couldn't help trying to just make the pain stop.

He waited for long moments, undecided about whether he was going to still try to talk to Doc or if he would just come back later; but even as he tried to make up his mind the door to Charlie and Cam's quarters opened and Charlie himself came out, and his face was dark with anger. "Don't _ever_ come in without waiting for one of us to say it's okay again."

Snake Eyes' hands fumbled an apology even as he flushed. He had been so focused on talking to Doc about Shana that he hadn't taken a thought to anyone else, and if Charlie had known he'd come in, had Doc or Cam?

Charlie's eyes softened a bit, although there was still a hint of anger down in the bottom of his eyes. "She didn't see you. I'm glad, because she would have been humiliated to know someone else saw her like that. She didn't even want me in there, but the dressings on her back go from her shoulders to the back of her knees and she had to stand for the process—and it's incredibly painful and if I hadn't been holding her she wouldn't have borne it. She's in massive amounts of pain when she's not asleep, and when she is asleep she's having nightmares. The pain meds are very strong so she's feeling a little nauseous when she's awake, and because of that she doesn't feel like eating. I'm practically forcing her to eat, because she's lost so much weight—before we left for Africa, she was one-thirty. Right now she's somewhat closer to about eighty-nine and still dropping. If she loses too much more her body will simply shut down and stop functioning." Another sigh. "She's also on antibiotics for the massive infection she's experiencing everywhere, and Doc is considering a hysterectomy when she gets strong enough to handle the procedure because she just…took too much damage. Too many tears and cuts."

Snake Eyes gasped audibly.

"Cam told him it's because she was the 'staff toy'. She said Shana didn't take nearly as much damage because Kennedy, the bastard who bought them from Amsterdam, reserved Shana for himself exclusively. Cam was the only one subjected to gang rape—there were sixteen men on the island, five native Fijians and eleven whites. None of the natives ever—took advantage—of her 'availability'—but the white men, the complement hand-picked by Kennedy, took full advantage whenever they wanted to. She—" he took a deep breath. "She described an incident when they tried to inject her with the same pentothal drugs they gave Shana. And it turns out that she's allergic to barbitol-type drugs, of all things—she went into anaphylaxis, her diaphragm froze and she couldn't breathe, and they were so shocked they let Shana in to take care of her. Shana gave her air and kept her breathing until the drug wore off—they only gave her a tiny bit—and she could breathe again, and thank God her heart didn't stop or she would have died. She said Shana saved her life several times." He looked directly at Snake Eyes. "Remind me to thank Shana for that when she wakes up. Now, did you come to see Doc or—"

As if on cue, they heard Doc's voice from inside the room. "We're done, so if you'd like to come back in, come on back."

Charlie opened the door, smiling, and said lightly, "Snake Eyes just dropped by looking for Doc, so he's got excellent timing."

Cam was lying back in bed, tucked in carefully in the middle of it. And now Snake Eyes saw the folding Army cot that had been set up on the other side of the bed for Charlie.

Cam saw the direction his eyes wandered, and she raised her hands tiredly to sign to him, _It hurts too much for Charlie to climb in and out of bed right now—every time the bed moves it feels like someone's whipping me with barbed wire again, so he's sleeping on the cot for now until the worst of the pain passes and I can bear him in the same bed._ The tear glinting in the side of her eye spoke eloquently of just how much that hurt.

Snake Eyes raised his hands to sign, awkwardly—he wasn't used to signing for anyone but Shana, but neither Doc nor Charlie were too good at reading sign language, so perhaps Cam could translate. _I had a question for Doc about Shana. She woke up earlier and tried to get to the bathroom, and fell over, and when I tried to get to her and pick her up my hand touched the side of her face. She had a panic attack, and I wanted to ask Doc if he had any idea why she would have reacted like that._

Cam spoke aloud now, for Doc and Charlie's benefit. "Snake Eyes says that Shana had a panic attack earlier when he was trying to get her to stand and his hand touched her face. He wanted to ask Doc if there was a particular reason why she would have acted that way."

"I—I don't know, maybe something happened to her when she was there that we weren't aware of—" Doc stopped because the sudden light in Cam's eyes told them she'd figured something out.

"While we were captives—they used inflatable gags on us." She saw their incomprehension, and her voice went flat as she tried to explain. "A rubber piece that goes into the mouth, it's narrow at the end that fits between the teeth and the end that rests inside the mouth is inflatable. When inflated they're pretty effective at cutting off sound, but if they're over-inflated beyond what our jaws will accept, it'll dislocate the jaw. I heard the guards talking while I was strapped down and they were…well, it happened to Shana."

Doc and Charlie's face showed loathing and disgust—and Snake Eyes could feel the same expression on his face. _I'm…sorry, he signed. I never once imagined that anyone could do anything like that._

She translated that for Doc and Charlie's benefit, the lifted her hands wearily and signed as she spoke—but what her voice said and what her hands were actually saying was two different things. _I saw you come in. I'm sorry you had to see that._ _Charlie shouldn't have gotten mad at you for coming in—it's not like you could actually announce your presence, after all._ Aloud, what she said was, "Most people don't know the half of what one human being is capable of when they believe they own another person because most people can't imagine owning a person and forcing them to do something against their will."

Snake Eyes hands flashed in reply. _I am sorry I walked in and disturbed your privacy like that, It was inexcusable._

She shrugged_. It's okay. I've had to be naked in front of so many people in my life that it just doesn't really bother me much anymore_. Then, sensing that Charlie and Doc were wondering about the signing with no words, she translated his next set of signs. "I realize that you promised me you would bring Shana back but I didn't think it was going to cost you so much. I owe you a huge favor. A life for a life. If you ever need anything from me, just let me know. Whatever I can do, I will."

She nodded simply, then said in reply, "I didn't do this because I promised you, Snake Eyes. I did it because Shana is my best friend, the first 'best friend' I ever had in my life, and I did what I thought was right. And I don't regret it. Not a bit." Her hands dropped to the bed.

Guilt surged through Snake eyes again. She was exhausted and he was keeping her awake when she should be resting. So he gave her a warrior's bow and left the room quickly, trying to hide what her simple declaration had done to him. He'd finally pinpointed what Shana saw in Cam, why she so passionately defended the younger woman. Cam was a _good_ person, in ways that few people could simply be called 'good'. No matter how the people around her let her down, she still kept doing what she thought was right, what she _felt_ was right, irregardless of what it cost her personally.

He stopped at the supply closet and checked the lightbulb supply, chose a 40 watt bulb with a soft frosted coating. He was so familiar with her quarters that he could probably get dressed blindfolded if he had to, and in her current state strong light would hurt more than help. He was in a decidedly better frame of mind by the time he arrived back at Shana's quarters and opened the door.

His eyes fell on the bed before the door was fully open and his heart nearly stopped when he saw she wasn't in it. Maybe she was in the bathroom? And as he stepped in fully, he saw her.

She'd plainly gotten to the bathroom on her own, but just as plainly couldn't get back out. His heart twisted in his chest as he saw her face streaked with tears of humiliation and misery.

A quick peek into the tiny bathroom showed him that she'd vomited into the toilet. So she'd had enough presence of mind to get to the bathroom and throw up, but the effort had left her exhausted, and the withdrawal was causing her entire body to shake and her limbs to twitch uncontrollably. She was convulsing so much she couldn't coordinate her movement enough to get to her feet and get to the bed. She'd fallen to her knees and was slowly trying to crawl toward the bed, but due to weakness and exhaustion, she wasn't making much headway…and she was crying as she kept trying.

This time, when Snake Eyes reached out to help her she reached eagerly up to him, her glazed eyes and fogged mind recognizing him as 'help'. He wrapped his arms around her, hating the anguish pouring out of her, and stood upright, taking her with him.

He was shocked at how little she weighed, how light she seemed. She'd never been fat, but muscle weighed more than fat and she'd always had plenty of that. He'd loved caressing her muscled, toned legs and arms in a shower, or after a shower, rubbing lotion into her skin and listening to her moan in sensual satisfaction. Now she felt like a featherweight, but he couldn't really complain as her arms came up, wrapping around his neck in a tight hug. She clung to him as he carried her across the room and deposited her gently on the bed, feeling her quivering body as her skin went from hot and sweaty to cold and clammy. Fever and chills, an inability to coordinate her muscle movements, pupils dilated so that ordinary light hurt her eyes, weakness, dizziness, sweating and shaking—they were all symptoms that Doc had put in her medical folder as he'd explained that she would be going through a period of withdrawal that would last a few days to maybe a week.

He gently tucked her into bed, noticing that once she was comfortable her eyes closed of their own accord. Sleep was probably the best thing for her now, and he pulled the covers up as her trembling increased—shivers now, from chills.

He still wanted to get her into a shower, to clean her off and wash the filth from her skin, but there hadn't been an opportunity yet, and he didn't want to complicate matters by making her do anything she maybe wasn't willing or able or ready to do. He could easily see that trying to strip his t-shirt and boxers off her right now to get her into a shower would do more harm than good; she needed clothing to feel human. And he was noticing that each time he touched her, each time he helped her do something she was trying to do, some small part of her saw that, understood that, recognized that; when he'd tried to pick her up, coming out of the bathroom, his hand had brushed her face where he'd touched her earlier. Instead of inciting a panic attack, she'd leaned into it, welcomed it; another sign that Shana was still in there, somewhere, and Doc's surmise that she was just suffering from acute shock and she would get better (eventually) was correct. Doc had spoken to Psyche-Out concerning Shana's stupor, but Psyche-Out was lost; he'd never dealt with anything like this before.

He was in the process of dragging out the desk chair to the middle of the room when there was a gentle tap on the door. Still holding the light bulb, he went to the door and opened it—to see Alex standing there, in civilian clothing and carrying another bulb identical to the one in his hand.

She gave him a wan smile. "Oh. You already have one. I thought she might need a softer bulb, but you already have one."

Snake Eyes took a quick peek behind him; Shana was sound asleep and not about to wake up soon, so he stepped back and invited Alex in. Alex stepped in quietly and stood by the door, as if reluctant to intrude, and her face as she looked at Shana sleeping in the bed was a mix of anger and pity. "People are so heartless and careless and cruel. I will never understand how one person can be so heartless and cruel to another. I've spent my life prosecuting monsters like that and I still don't understand them."

He smiled at her gently, patted her shoulder. She understood it as an 'I understand' gesture and held the chair for him as he climbed onto it, then watched as he unscrewed the washer that held the plexiglass over the ceiling fixture and took it down. A few seconds saw the old bulb unscrewed, and he handed it to Alex (who quickly put it down on the desk; it was hot) and handed him up the dimmer one.

When it was done the room was filled with a softer light. While it was dimmer and Alex seemed to have trouble adjusting, Snake Eyes knew when he saw the result that Shana would have an easier time of getting her dilated eyes to adjust to the ambient lighting.

"This will work," Alex said, then turned to him. "Look, I know it's none of my business, but…well, there's this friend—we have an FBI forensic profiler attached to the Special Victims Unit, Dr. George Huang, and he's helped us out a few times before by giving us advice on how to handle a particular victim's trauma. I don't know if you'd be willing for me to try talking to him about the state Shana's in, maybe get some advice or tips on what to do and how to help break her out of it?"

Snake Eyes nodded vigorously. At this point, Shana's continued silence was worrying him, and while he didn't expect that she'd be comprehending anything clearly until the last of the drugs wore off, he at least wanted some idea what he could expect and if there was anything else he might be able to do to help her. At this point he felt helpless, and he hated feeling helpless; he'd done what he could but still felt like he should be doing more. _I'll welcome whatever advice your Dr. Huang can give me._

"I'll let you know what he says."


	6. Chapter 67: Alex

**Chapter 67: Alex**

Alex parked her Mustang downtown by the Federal Courthouse neatly and stepped out. It was funny; until she'd seen Olivia's royal-blue Mustang (with vanity plates that read 'Alex') she hadn't really felt any real affection or affinity for old cars; but Liv's 'baby' had changed her perspective a bit. While she'd initially thought just of getting a 'matching' one so they could have a matched pair, she'd gone to see three 65 Mustangs as she'd been trying to pick one out, and while this one wasn't in the best of shape, there had just been…something…about this particular one that had made her think 'mine!' as soon as she saw it. The car was now humming along, courtesy of Courtney, and the red primer color had been replaced by a coat of gleaming original candy-apple red paint. Courtney was fussing that she still needed to give it a few more top coats to protect the paint job, but Alex was in love with it and was just waiting for ownership to transfer so her temp tags could be replaced with vanity plates that read 'Olivia.'

Ettienne loved her car and would drive it as often as she let him, which wasn't frequently. First, the car was hers; second, when he drove it, the combination of red classic car, thick Cajun accent, and soldier inevitably turned him into a chick magnet. Alex knew he wasn't serious, but she still managed to feel slightly possessive, and when they went out together in it—some old lady had stopped them the last time they'd gone out and told them they looked like a charming couple. Ettienne had blushed, but there had been a certain swagger to his step for the rest of the day.

She sighed as she signed in at the front desk, submitted to the bag checks the federal courthouse required (nothing there—just paperwork) and then headed upstairs to Abbie Carmichael's office. Abbie had started out in the New York District Attorney's Office as ADA Jack McCoy's second chair, working homicide cases; then went to SVU as an ADA herself and working Liv and Elliot's cases as a lead prosecutor. When she'd gotten an offer from the Feds to come work for them as a federal prosecutor, she'd gone—and Alex had stepped into her place, had quickly developed a name for herself as a prosecutor every bit as tough as Abbie 'Hang 'em High' Carmichael. When asked, Alex simply put her success down to the fact that she had a very good support team; the detectives of the SVU, despite the kinds of trouble they'd gotten into with IAB over the years, put the victims and justice first, and everything else, even their lives and careers, second; when Cesar Velez had put a contract out on Alex's life they had been the first ones on her security detail; when they'd gotten stuck between committing perjury or revealing that she was in witness protection, they'd chosen to commit perjury rather than reveal her secret.

But Olivia had said that, while they put their effort into putting together airtight cases for her, she worked her butt off arguing those cases in court and getting the conviction, and so while she gave credit to the unit's support, she should also give herself credit for how hard she worked. So it was a team effort, and while Alex had gotten offers from the Feds to follow Abbie's footsteps, she'd politely turned them all down, just as she'd turned down Lieutenant General Johnson's offer to sponsor her into the military's JAG program. Despite her frustration at what could, sometimes, be very, very boring prosecutorial work, she couldn't imagine working anywhere else than where she already was, doing anything she wasn't already doing. And her life, in the last year, had been enlivened by an extremely charming, gracious, sexy Cajun soldier…

She was still grinning as she taped on the open door of Abbie Carmichael's office and Carmichael herself looked up. "Yeah, you can grin because you're not the one handling this case," Abbie said, but there was no rancor in her voice. "Have a seat until I finish with this form." Alex sat.

When she'd first come to see Abbie in the federal court building she'd expected something…larger, maybe, more spacious, well appointed, or just different. The first thing that struck her when she walked in that first day—and what struck her every time she walked in here—was that for all the fact that this was a federal building, the office surroundings itself hadn't changed appreciably. There was little, if any, difference between an office in the New York City District Court of Lower Manhattan and an office in the Federal office building just down the street here.

Abbie signed her name to the bottom of the form she was working on, tucked it into a manila folder sitting on her desk, and gave Alex her full attention. "I was expecting you here at some point this week, as soon as I saw your name on the paperwork that crossed my desk." And, with mock sternness, "You have some explaining to do. How on Earth does a Manhattan ADA get mixed up with a bunch of classified covert-ops soldiers at a military base so secret I can't get any straight answers to where they're even located? And then those operatives get mixed into a human trafficking mess and I wind up with the file of an international financial business figure on my desk accused of some heinous crimes?"

"There are certain things I can't tell you because they are classified, but…" and Alex proceeded to tell Abbie as much as she could about the whole story of the last year, starting with meeting the Joes at the Goma airport almost a year before, right on up to the Joes' cooperation with the Navy, the FBI and Homeland Security in a joint raid on Kennedy's private island to get Shana and Cam out.

It took quite some time, and Abbie sat, enthralled, listening to Alex's story. Not too enthralled—when Alex first used the word 'human trafficking' Abbie grabbed a yellow legal pad and started scribbling everything Alex said, even stopping her at a few points to ask her to repeat something. Patiently Alex repeated everything Cam had said about the human trafficking business; described in exacting detail what Conrad and Allie had said about the market in Amsterdam, and what she'd been able to glean about the details of the island mansion Shana and Cam had been held.

It was here that Abbie finally held up a hand. "You don't have to tell me anything about that—the Feds took pictures of everything. Here, have a look." She shoved a file folder across the desk at Alex.

Alex took the folder, opened it. Abbie remained silent as Alex took in the photos of the mansion on the island. An emerald gem in a turquoise sea, with the marble-white, pristine mansion rising like a pale queen over the entire island. Interior pictures showed a well-appointed, completely modern kitchen; all the latest amenities, stainless steel refrigerator and ceramic flat-top stove as well as an old-fashioned wood-burning fireplace with a roasting spit. Lushly-appointed living room and dining rooms with dark heavy, expensive cherrywood furniture and expensive bone china.

More photos, then; a bedroom with a huge four-poster, canopied bed; no canopy, though; the reason obvious when Alex saw that the FBI pictures had captured the ropes tied to the top of the posts, to the bottom of the posts at the foot of the bed. Another picture; a bathroom with a chain locked around the foot of an attached vanity and an empty metal collar at the other end of the chain; and a library with a hidden door.

And then a sequence of pictures; steps, leading downward into a chamber with rock walls and ceiling. A landing in the middle of those steps heading to what looked like a laundry room; the same steps, going further down until the person taking pictures got to the bottom—a torture chamber.

There was no mistaking the small eight square foot 'cells'—not after you saw the barred doors in front of them. There was no mistaking their purpose, when one picture showed two cells with thin, moth-eaten blankets and lumpy pillows—and those blankets had what were quite plainly bloodstains on them. A wall with nails anchored into the rock, in order to hang impact implements of all kinds. Alex froze as she saw, on a rough wooden table outfitted with straps, a whip made of a sturdy wooden handle with strands of barbed wire. And there was blood crusted on that whip

"Cam," Alex choked, but she had to look through the rest of the pictures; a medical/surgical theater with a stainless steel table bristling with straps. Drawers full of instruments. And a few outside pictures, two tall whipping posts with chains hanging from the tops, meant to pull a woman's limbs taut, stretching her body for a whipping. And Alex couldn't look anymore. "Jesus."

"You recognize any of that?" Abbie's gentle voice broke into Alex's thoughts.

Alex made an effort to pull her thoughts together. "Cam, the girl who used to be a sex slave—she has huge infected gashes all over her back. I look at that barbed wire whip and I'll bet that's what cut her up so badly—they whipped her with barbed wire." She would have to tell Doc. "And Shana…she was reserved for Kennedy's personal sex toy—I'll bet he kept her chained to his bed on a couple of nights. They were only on his island for two weeks—but I'll bet it felt like a lifetime."

"Are they going to testify?" Abbie's voice was still soft as she took the folder from Alex.

"Cam will. She promised before she left that she'd testify for me, against the son of a bitch who enslaved her the first time, when she was fifteen. I'll get her to testify against Kennedy. Shana…" Alex took in a breath, let it out in a shuddering sigh. "Shana I don't know. She suffered a severe shock; we still don't know what happened in Africa, during the month between the time she went missing and the time Cam found her in the slave market. She was in bad shape when she got back to base; Cam was worse, physically, but Shana…something's broken in her mind. She's in what Doc calls a benign stupor; she sees what's going on around her, she follows movement and tracks you with her eyes, but she won't talk. She hasn't said a word since she woke up. The only person she recognizes is her boyfriend, Snake Eyes—yes, I know, but his real name is classified, as is practically everything else about him, so don't laugh like that, Abbie!—Snake Eyes is the only one she recognizes, and it's in a passive sort of way; she knows he's there and she trusts him not to hurt her but she doesn't actively recognize him as him. He's mute, a helicopter accident a while back scarred his face and took his voice, so he can't even talk to her. Usually they sign to each other but right now she's unresponsive. There's only one psych officer at base and he's more of a counselor than a trauma therapist. He's as clueless to how to handle her situation as the rest of us are."

Abbie sighed. "Well, it'll be a couple months before we're ready to take him to trial, so hopefully she'll be better by then. And if you need to, you could always talk to George Huang over at the FBI building. I know he's only posted to the SVU as a forensic profiler, but he is a licensed therapist as well."

"George…" Alex's eyes lit up. She'd completely forgotten about her determination to talk to George. Yes, she could talk to him about Shana: they were both FBI, and while she couldn't bring George onto base, she could ask him for advice. "Thanks, Abbie." She was suddenly itching to go find Dr. Huang.

Abbie sensed that, and waved a hand. "Go on. I'm done here for the moment, I'll give you a call if I need anything else for the case. And…Alex?" she caught Alex's gaze as the ADA stood up. "I wish you luck. Keep me apprised and give them my regards. I can't wait to meet these two women."

Alex nodded.

Dr. George Huang had a tiny office in the FBI building. As the Field Psych agent for the FBI's New York office, his main purpose was to provide support and testimony for federal cases, and to provide support services for local law enforcement, but he was also a licensed therapist and had been instrumental in helping with a number of emotionally traumatized victims for SVU cases—as well as profiles for some of the worst serial rapists and murderers the SVU had ever encountered.

He looked up as Alex tapped on the door, and smiled. "Alex, how are you! It's been a little while since I last saw you." She'd only seen him twice since she'd returned to her duties as the SVU's ADA. "How are you doing?"

From any other psychologist, that would have been a double-edged, loaded question, but Alex knew him well enough by now to know that it wasn't intentional, and that he really was interested in how his friends were doing. So she took that as an invitation to step into his office. "I'm doing well, George, but I'm struggling with a bit of a problem and I was hoping that you could help me out."

"Whatever I can do." She took that as an invitation and sat in the chair across from his desk, and started to talk.

She gave him the barest details of how they'd all gotten into this mess; he knew already about her decision to go to the ICC, and a little about subsequent events, including her involvement with a classified military project. He listened with interest, then with intense interest as she described the mansion on the private island and what they'd been able to piece together about Cam and Shana's time there.

"She's in what the base doctor calls a benign stupor. She's awake, she follows movement with her eyes, but she doesn't speak, isn't talking. She recognizes things on some very basic, passive level, she knows enough to try and get up to tend to her basic needs—she makes trips to the bathroom to throw up, because she's going through some pretty vicious withdrawal right now, but everything else just seems to be out of sort of blind instinct."

George frowned, thinking hard. "And her boyfriend is mute, so he can't reach her by talking to her. Sign language—and recognition of it—is a higher brain function, so she wouldn't be able to respond. Hmm." He thought for a few minutes. "So what you should be trying to focus on is reaching her through basic, simple things. Does she have an iPod or personal music player? Her boyfriend could try to play familiar music, maybe something that they danced to while on a date, a song that reminds them of some special time they shared. Scents, too; if she likes coffee, the smell of it in her quarters could remind her of happier times, jog her memory of waking up with him. Food that she particularly likes could be left in her quarters, not only as an incentive to eat but also to jog her memory and try to break her out of it. If there is a particular cologne her boyfriend wore that she liked, or a perfume that she liked, you could try that. Air freshener in her quarters that smells like something familiar. He thought some more. "And some visual reminders. Any photos of happier times, group pictures while on vacation or leave. Photos of her family and her best friends, even pictures of home. Those could be hung on her walls to provide a visual prompt to try and jog her memory."

He leaned forward. "Just a couple of suggestions. And Alex...I know you want her to testify against the guy who trafficked them both, but you may have to face the fact that even after she 'wakes up', her mind may block out the entire incident as too traumatic for her to deal with and she may not be able to testify."

"That will be fine. If she can't testify, then she shouldn't be forced to. I still have the other officer who went undercover to find her—Corporal Arlington."

Huang frowned. "Alex…I recommend that you not depend too heavily on her either. She was a victim of trafficking when she was younger, and now she's been a victim again. Be very careful with what you ask her to do, and how much; she might also simply refuse to testify, because the whole thing was traumatic and painful and she may not be psychologically able to handle it."

Alex dismissed that. "Before she left she promised me she'd testify. She's a strong woman, stronger in some ways that even Shana, with all her training, is. She'll be fine."

"I hope you're right." George sat back. "Let me know how it goes, Alex. Please. And you have my phone number—if you, or the soldiers involved, need to talk to someone, I'll be available anytime, day or night."


	7. Chapter 68: Aware

**Chapter 68: Aware**

Snake Eyes felt like an idiot.

"…play her iPod or her favorite CDs in her quarters, since the familiar sound might jog her memory and bring her closer. And any photos of her could be hung up on her walls, giving her a visual prompt, a reminder of who she is and what she likes. Do you have any personal photos of her?"

Did he? Only about sixteen photo albums full and multiple shoeboxes. He nodded, slightly numbly, to Alex. Yes, he certainly did have photos.

"Put up as many of those as you can. Happy pictures, maybe not even taken here on base if you have any like that. I know she liked coffee, the smell of coffee might jog her memory and 'wake' her up, so having a cup in her quarters, even if she doesn't drink it, might bring her a little further back to herself. An air freshener that smells like something she likes could be sprayed in her room to jog her memory through scents, plus if there was any kind of cologne you wore that she especially liked, or any perfume that she liked, you could try applying some and see if that works too. Scent, sound, touch, taste, anything sensory—that's how you're going to be able to reach her in this state she's in."

It was obvious. So damn obvious. Why hadn't he thought of that? Her favorite music, the soft lighting, the smell of a familiar cup of coffee and the smell of some of her favorite foods—and he could paper her walls with the photos he had of her, as well as leave an album of very happy personal, special photos on her night table for her to browse, look at, and hopefully remember.

However, when Alex asked if she should check with someone to see if he could get a small TV for Shana's quarters, he shook his head. The light might be too bright for her eyes, and she had never really been much of a TV fan anyway—there weren't really any TV shows that she actively followed. Also, he didn't want her to see Damien; the news was rather full, at the moment, of stories about Damien Kennedy, international financial figure, having been arrested by the FBI for holding two women as captive sex slaves on his island.

Since he'd been spending his time with Shana, he'd missed the story when it broke four days ago (just as Shana and Cam woke up from surgery) but he'd been following it carefully since. In the rare moments when she fell asleep and he knew she wasn't going to wake up, he'd run to the mess to get a tray of food, both for him and for Shana, and while he waited for the servers to pull the meal together he'd kept an eye on the TVs in the mess. Reporters hadn't been able to get to the island; the Navy had parked the Colombia right off the coast and had small cutters running interdiction patrols—no one in or out.

The native Fijian Islanders had been dropped off on the main Fijian island, but not before several of them had given full statements. Yes, Kennedy was in the habit of bringing strange women to the island and kept them captive in the cellars under the big house. He had done horrible things to them—virtually all of them had heard women screaming in pain, screaming for help, and the islanders were very, very adamant that they were definitely not there voluntarily.

The FBI had brought back some of the things that they'd found over there that they thought would help in the case; whips of all kinds, including one made of barbed wire with which Cam had confirmed to Doc that she'd been whipped; harnesses like the barbaric one that Cam had worn to the Amsterdam market; other things that Snake Eyes himself had no name for but that he knew could be used to hurt someone—like his Shana.

And of course there was controversy. The media had first painted Kennedy as a successful businessman who was being accused of these heinous crimes because there were people out there jealous of his success and determined to bring him down; that the charges were made up by his enemies. Then, when the FBI brought the equipment out, Kennedy was portrayed by the media as an eccentric businessman who indulged in some kinky, exotic (but consensual) activity. And while public fervor had cooled some at this revelation, there were still staunch supporters who had said that he was paralyzed from the waist down, confined to a wheelchair, and he'd had to develop alternate tastes in order to achieve satisfaction because he certainly couldn't get it the usual way.

The media and press had been looking for the two women who'd reportedly been kidnapped and held on the island as slaves, but without luck. They'd vanished completely, and the FBI refused to tell the press where they were, saying that they needed their privacy to heal (that was true) and that their injuries were grave and they weren't able to appear in public or give statements (which was also true.) After seeing a whip made of barbed wire with bloodstains that indicated it had actually been used on a living person (an FBI forensic report had confirmed for the media that the stains were human blood and it did match the blood type of one of the victims) some popular opinion had turned away from Kennedy.

It had turned away even more when Dutch police raided the warehouse in Amsterdam where Cam had gone in to find Shana. And for the first time everyone saw what Duke and Allie had seen; the pens, the terrified children, women and men; the buyers and sellers, and several well-known figures from various countries had been arrested by Dutch officials in the act of purchasing other human beings. The human rights watchdog groups who had been enlisted to try and find out where some of these people had come from, had belonged, and who were trying to provide some counseling services for the terrified children had made very public statements praising 'the two women who have been through this and are brave enough to stand against these monsters and testify against them' and they offered the FBI their support if the two women witnesses needed placement, counseling, or any form of moral or material support. The FBI had repeatedly assured the press and public that the two women were safe, they were in the best of hands receiving the best of care and that their sentiment was appreciated.

As incredible as it seemed, Shana and Cam's identities hadn't leaked. The Fijian Islanders said they'd been called 'Hole' and 'Testarossa', and that was what the media called them. There was controversy about that too—no one liked the word 'hole' as appended to a woman, but since their names were a closely guarded secret, the press ended up having to use the names—which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because when popular media heard those names it turned public opinion away from Kennedy even more.

And then it came out that of the staff on the island, every person who was not a native Fijian had a Red Notice put out for them through INTERPOL. Most of them were thugs, ex-law enforcement and ex-military who had been accused of heinous crimes in their own country, things like raping children and shooting unarmed people; the men ranged from former mafia hitmen to one former assassin for the Irish Republican Army, and a lot of the media frenzy focused on Rosa Capelletti when she got out of the hospital after being treated for an unspecified injury; a former mafia interrogator and torturer, and the testimony from the native Fijian Islanders confirmed for the horrified press that the surgical theater had been hers, that the stock of drugs in the medical cabinets had been hers, and she had used them gratuitously on the victims. And murmurings started even among those who still thought Kennedy was innocent—if he was innocent of the act of raping the slaves and captives, he had at the very least allowed torture of the slaves and was therefore guilty of facilitation.

The entire controversy—was he guilty or wasn't he, was he directly guilty or just guilty by virtue of having looked the other way while his island had been used as a sort of refuge for international criminals who had taken the opportunity to bring sex slaves to the island—all of that was being hotly debated, argued, and dissected by the media, and Snake Eyes wanted to keep that away from Shana,. Not only because of the controversy, but Snake Eyes was also worried what the sight of the bastard's face might do to Shana's fragile psyche. So he'd refused the TV.

But he did stop in his quarters and spend a little time looking through the photo albums and shoeboxes of pictures, finding the best and most personal photos he could find of Shana. None of the pictures of them on missions; these were personal photos of her when she was just being herself, like the photo Duke had seen of Shana trying to catch the butterfly in the meadow by their cabin. He put all of those special photos of her in a small bedside album and balanced that on top of the shoebox full of pictures he was planning on hanging all over her room, and headed for her quarters.

He put the box of photos down on the desk by the room door and closed it, then went over to check her. And as soon as he got close to the bed he knew something was wrong. She'd kicked the covers off, the tshirt she wore was soaked through with sweat, and she was panting for breath, tossing and turning in the bed.

He reached out to touch her forehead and felt her skin. She was on fire; she burned to the touch, her skin hot and clammy from sweat, and she was moaning, a soft, throaty whine. It elated him because it was the first sound he'd heard her make since she came back, and it confirmed (to his admittedly paranoid mind) that her vocal cords hadn't been damaged as his had been. Doc had said nothing was wrong except shock, but he'd wondered…

But her skin was hot—too hot. She was spiking a fever. Hyperthermia, he remembered Clayton talking about it in briefing; Olivia had been drugged and had gone through withdrawal during their escape and she'd spiked a fever. Clayton had dunked her in the river to cool her down.

He threw back the covers and picked Shana up in his arms, noting distantly that she was a lot lighter than she should be, and his heart ached all over again—but he crossed her quarters in three quick strides, bumped the bathroom light switch with his elbow to turn it on and dropped to his knees beside the tub, ignoring the pain as his knee banged against the side.

He laid her down carefully in the bottom of the tub, then flipped the water on. Not hot, not cold; slightly warm but still cool against his skin, then he grabbed the head at the end of the hose and aimed it at the core of her body.

The t-shirt became translucent, and at any other time he would have found her body, wrapped in one of his wet tshirts, enticing. Right now, though, he was too focused on getting her cooled down and the fever broken, and he reached down to take her hand, holding it so he could feel whether her temperature had gone down. Her eyes were open now, fastened on him; an unblinking, penetrating stare, with a slight frown of puzzlement. She wasn't even flinching at the brightness of the bathroom light.

He didn't even think. _Shana? Are you all right?_ He signed into her hand, then wanted to smack himself in the forehead. She couldn't respond, Doc said this shock-based stupor had suppressed all higher brain functions, how could he possibly expect her to recognize sign language?

And then, unbelievably, her hand moved in his, and her fingers tapped against his palm. _Snake… Eyes…_

He stared at his hand for long moment, almost disbelievingly, then looked up into those familiar green eyes. Familiar because _she_ was behind them again, _his_ Shana, given back to him. Her eyes were still glazed a little, and she was so weak she couldn't even hold her head up to look at him—her chin sank onto her chest as her fiery hair darkened to auburn under the water. He hadn't put the stopper in the tub, and the water streaming down her body, and off her, was gray with filth and dirt and dried blood and God only knew what else, but she was _alive_ and she was _there!_ And as he raised his hand to sign to her, to start talking to her, she pulled her hand out of his and started tugging at the wet tshirt.

_Off_… she signed slowly. _Get….off…wash…_

He understood her then, and hastened to help her. She wanted to get clean. Her back was still raw from the whipping and her time on the cross, and he heard her whimper in pain as he eased his shirt away from her thin back, and carefully lifted it off over her head. She was so thin underneath, every rib standing out in sharp relief, not as emaciated as Cam had been, but not by much, and it was only because Shana had had more muscle than Cam and muscle broke down more slowly. She crossed her arms across her chest, hunched her shoulders, and shrank into herself as Snake Eyes reached for the bottles of shampoo on the edge of the tub; one his smelling of a cool waterfall, and the other was Shana's peaches-and-cream shampoo. He popped the bottle open and the smell of peaches filled the bathroom, a scent he hoped would bring back memories for her.

He didn't expect her to bolt upright in the tub, as fast as she could, and start trying to claw her way out, making frantic whimpering sounds. He caught her, understanding that she wanted out of the tub but unsure why, and he signed to her rapidly. _Shana, what? What's wrong?_

_Kennedy…the island…peach shampoo…he tried to drown me…_

Snake Eyes grabbed the bottle of shampoo, snapped the top back onto it, and threw it across the bathroom so it landed out of sight on the floor behind the toilet. He was furious—that had been Shana's favorite, it reminded her of home, and he'd loved the scent—while she was gone it had been the one thing he'd clung to—the scent of peaches from her hair on her pillow. But now the only shampoo left was his, and although he doubted she wanted to smell like him, she grabbed for it with shaking hands and sniffed it...and a tiny smile crossed her face as she looked at him, held up one shaking arm. _Smells…like…you_.

His heart ached as he poured some of the shampoo into his hand and worked it into her hair, combing his fingers through the tangled locks, taking care not to pull or yank on the strands. Kennedy had taken her to a bathroom and tried to drown her. Well, he was going to find her another shampoo that wouldn't remind her of her ordeal, but for now, he certainly wasn't going to begrudge her his. She hugged her knees to her thin chest, as he lathered and rinsed her hair, then repeated it again until her hair was clean and the water running from her head was clear.

He was reaching for the soft washcloth to soap it and start washing her when her hand on his arm stopped him. He turned to her, question in his eyes, and she took the washcloth from him as her eyes begged him to let her do this herself. And Snake Eyes realized that him washing her would probably not be a good idea—he had no idea where all the sore, tender spots were on her body and he absolutely didn't want to risk hurting her. So he soaped the washcloth and handed it to her wordlessly, and she took it. Her eyes flickered to the door, and he rose to his feet, stepping out of the bathroom, and closed the door most of the way to give her some privacy. After a moment he heard her shift in the bathtub as she got herself into a position where she could wash herself, and he controlled himself and didn't even peek until he heard the water stop running.

He grabbed a towel from the closet and stepped in, and anguish stabbed him as he saw her standing on the bath mat, shivering, dripping, thin arms crossed over her chest. As he opened the bathroom door she shrank into herself, flinching, cowering, trying to cover her breasts and sex with her hands, and he understood even as he wanted to scream in frustrated anguish. She didn't want anyone to see her, didn't want him to see her naked, and he wished desperately that this whole nightmare had never happened. She was painfully self conscious, cringing a little under his gaze, _don't look at me, please…I'm so ugly… _she signed haltingly_. I'm sorry…_

_Shana…no. Don't be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for. You aren't ugly, God, you have no idea how beautiful you look to me_…but she was reaching for the towel, and she'd had to move her arm from across her chest to do so, and he saw the red skin of her breasts. It looked better than it had a couple days ago, the worst of the bee venom must have worked out of her now, leaving nothing but irritated skin behind…but she saw his gaze, misinterpreted it, and clutched the towel to her chest as tears welled up in her eyes. _Don't…don't look at me…please…just go…_

She was getting upset. He didn't want her to get upset. It would be counterproductive now, just as they'd taken this huge step forward in her recovery, started communicating again, and she'd recognized him, she knew his name, she'd signed to him. She still hadn't said a word, but she was at least communicating again through sign language, and he would just have faith that eventually the rest of her skills would come back too. So he stepped backward out of the bathroom, closing the door most of the way so she could dry off, fetched another pair of his boxers and another of his tshirts, and then he cracked the door open and stuck his hand, holding the clothes, inside the bathroom. A moment later her fingers brushed his as she took the clothes, and he stepped back and waited.

A few minutes later the door opened again, and she stepped out. In his shirt and boxers, she looked like a little girl playing dress-up in clothes too big for her, and he couldn't help but smile as he opened his arms to her.

And she stepped into his embrace, buried her face in his shoulder, and started to cry. Cried so hard her body shook with the force of her sobs. Cried so hard he was afraid she would fall over, so he swept her legs up over his other arm, carried her to the bed, and laid her down on it, then curled around her all without dislodging the choke-hold she had on his neck. And he held her until she cried herself into an exhausted sleep—not the drug-fogged sleep she'd been experiencing till now, but a deep regular, healing sleep. And he finally joined her.


	8. Chapter 69: Assessment

**Chapter 69: Assessment**

She woke.

And it was complete awakening now, not the blurry, fogged sort of partial awareness she'd experienced for the past several days. She'd been aware of waking and sleeping, but it had been like seeing everything through a thick fog, noticing vague shapes in a thick mist, and for the most part she'd simply shut down her awareness of what was going on around her, where she was, and retreated, terrified that if she woke up this dream she was having of being comfortable and safe and protected would be over and she would be back on the island with him…

She opened her eyes then, and the first thing she saw was the ceiling of her quarters. She lay for a moment, just looking at the comfortably familiar random dotting of the ceiling tile. _Maybe Wayne has a point_, she thought drowsily, _maybe I should put a picture of Snake Eyes up there…_the thought of Snake Eyes' discomfort at finding himself the subject of a pinup poster made her smile.

She turned her head to the right, and more familiar sights greeted her. Her desk, with an unfinished letter to Sean (and, by extension, the rest of her family, even though her mother and her sister would be largely uninterested in the doings of the youngest of the O'Hara children; they were still uncomfortable with her decision to join the military even after nearly fifteen years. The laundry hamper, spilling over with clothes; mostly Snake Eyes' clothes, she thought…and as that thought crossed her mind, the bed shifted under her and brought her attention to her left.

Her first thought was complete and total happiness at having him close to her, near her. Joy that she was finally home, that he was here with her just as she'd dreamed during the long days of her captivity.

And as she studied his face, renewing her acquaintance with every line, every plane, every feature, the ache in her chest made tears spring to her eyes. She'd 'woken' up when she felt the water spray on her face, her consciousness telling her she'd better pay attention in case Kennedy was going to try and drown her again..and even after she'd seen Snake Eyes, the smell of her shampoo…she winced as she remembered the way Snake Eyes close the bottle and throw it away. She'd always liked that shampoo, but now with the memory of Kennedy shoving her down into the bathtub as he tried to drown her, coming up for air and gasping in that peach scented air was forever going to taint her enjoyment of the scent. In fact, she didn't even know if she was ever going to be able to enjoy eating peaches again. The thought of it made her stomach turn.

But she was clean, her hair soft, and scented with Snake Eyes' shampoo. A smile turned the corners of her mouth upwards even as tears filled her eyes. He'd been so patient in the bathroom, pouring some of his shampoo into his hands, lathering it into her long red hair, and rinsing it, over and over, until she was clean. And she'd tried to wash herself, but certain parts of her body were still too tender to bear the touch of even a soft washcloth for long, and so she'd just made sure the filth was washed from her skin before she turned the water off.

It was the look on his face as he'd opened the bathroom door that made her want to cry. He'd looked at her with sorrow in his eyes. Sorry. He was sorry for her.

Damn it, she didn't want him to be sorry for her, like she was a victim. She didn't want pity. She just wanted to be treated like herself, as if nothing had happened. She wasn't a victim, she'd gone on the Congo trip willingly, and she had known it was dangerous. He had no business feeling sorry for her, and she didn't have any business feeling sorry for herself. She was a soldier and she knew full well that things like this happened and she should have expected it.

She climbed out of bed carefully, not wanting to disturb his sleep, and headed for the bathroom. There was a mirror hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and she took a deep breath, stripped off the tshirt and dropped the boxers so she could get a look at herself.

She stood for a little while, just looking at herself. No wonder he'd looked at her like that last night—she was hideous. She was too thin, had lost too much muscle and body fat, and now her ribs stood out against her skin, still discolored with bruises and welts from beatings, being kicked, and other abuse she'd taken. Her arms, once toned and muscular, were now stick-thin; her legs were in similar condition. Her breasts were still red and irritated—touching them had hurt last night, and she'd bitten her lip trying to hold back a whimper as she'd gently rinsed her skin with warm water. She turned slightly in front of the mirror so she could see her back.

She knew, intellectually, that the whipping they'd given her wasn't anywhere nearly as hard as the whipping they had given Cam, especially with the barbed wire; no skin had been torn from her back. But what she saw when she turned around still made her flinch. Blue-black bruises in various stages of healing striped and dotted her back, and hard scabs had formed where the impact of the whip on top of already-formed bruises had broken her skin and drawn blood. Her shoulder blades were a mess; first from lying on the filthy floor of the cargo container on the African leg of the trip, chained down with her back rubbing against the rough wooden floor as the ship pitched and rolled (thank God she hadn't gotten seasick) but the raw patches of skin on her shoulder blades had gotten slightly infected, although their stay in the hidden seaside cave, with Cam dunking her in the salty ocean water to keep her fever down as she went through withdrawal, had helped—the water had kept the wounds reasonably clean and allowed her to start healing, and not all of that healing had been entirely undone by the whipping and crucifixion.

She was ugly. Hideous. No wonder Snake Eyes had looked at her and felt sorry for her. Who wouldn't, as ugly as she was now, her body scarred and bruised and abused? And oh, God, what must Snake Eyes think of her now? She was the senior female member of the Joes, she was the one always in control, self -reliant, confident, collected. She had to be. And that was the woman Snake eyes fell in love with, the woman who could help him through everything, endure anything, face anything. A woman who could meet him, match him. Not…not this broken, scarred, out of control whimpering creature, someone's abused, cast off sex toy, a female who'd had so many men between her legs she'd lost count, a whore. She remembered the drugs they'd injected her with, the frantic sexual heat, remembered her begging them to let her come, begging them to use her, remembered taking the things they'd given her to use on herself as they watched, smiling, leering, reaching out to touch her and heighten her arousal as she tried to get some relief from the need that had driven her crazy.

Snake Eyes groaned, moving on the bed, and she froze, looking at him. He was waking up, and she didn't want him to see her like this. She grabbed up the clothes she'd been wearing, his boxers and t-shirt, and bolted for the bathroom, closing the door behind her. And then, for the first time since she'd met Snake Eyes, she locked the door between them.

Snake Eyes rolled over at the sound of the bathroom door locking and stared at the door in astonishment. He'd been half asleep when she climbed out of bed, had woken up the rest of the way as she crossed the room to stand in front of the mirror. He'd heard the whisper of cloth as she took her clothes off to check the damage that had been done to her body.

He'd peeked under his eyelids at her as she inspected herself. And despite his initial horrified reaction, he had to admit, after seeing what Cam looked like, Shana had definitely gotten off much easier. To his eyes, experienced with what sorts of wounds would leave scars, she might have a few high on her shoulder blades but that would be all. The swelling, redness, and irritation on her breasts and sex would go down, and she'd be the same wonderful Shana she'd always been—even the raw chafe wounds on her wrists and ankles were disappearing, helped along by the antibiotic ointment he'd been rubbing on her limbs each evening.

Thinking that she might be embarrassed to be seen looking at herself in the mirror, he made a show of turning over and groaning and rubbing his eyes. He was completely surprised, therefore, to see her snatch up her clothes and run for the bathroom, and even more astonished when he heard the bathroom door lock.

She had never locked a door between them before.

Whenever she closed a door it was an indication that she wanted privacy and he had never violated that. Not once during their entire ten year relationship had she ever locked a door between them, and the fact that she had done so now meant that something had changed. All he could do now was to try and remind her, as much as he could, that he was not going to hurt her, that maybe patience and time and his love would fix the mental wounds she'd incurred, so much deeper than the physical wounds she'd suffered.

Well, maybe he could help remind her. He climbed out of bed, reached for the two albums and the shoebox of photos. The albums he left sitting on her bedside table; the shoebox he took in his lap. Opened them, took the first photo out and pilled a piece off the roll of tape, then chose a spot on the opposite wall closest to her side of the bed and started taping pictures to the wall.

Shana paused for a long moment after she locked the door. The bedsprings creaked as Snake Eyes got out of it, and she heard his footsteps cross the room, pause next to the bathroom door, then continue the rest of the way across the room. She breathed a sigh and leaned against the door, eyes stinging.

She'd never locked a door between them before. She'd never had to. They knew each other so well, if she closed a door it was because she wanted privacy and he had always respected that. He'd never intruded where he wasn't wanted.

But things were different. After what she'd been through, she couldn't expect that things would just continue as they had. She couldn't expect that he would still want to be with her after knowing what she'd done, what she'd allowed to be done to her, what she'd begged Kennedy to do to her. Even under the drugs she should have known better. Should have tried harder to resist. She'd had narco-interrogation resistance training, for God's sake, she should have been prepared for this. At least, she reflected as she stepped over to the bathtub and turned the water on, at least she hadn't spilled any secrets, hadn't given their captors what they wanted to know.

And Cam…Shana shuddered. It wasn't that the experience had been all that unpleasant; Cam had tried not to hurt her, but…Shana hadn't wanted it. And Cam knew Shana wouldn't want it. And yet she'd gone and violated Shana, raped Shana.

And that was what hurt the most—betrayal. Cam hadn't trusted Shana to keep the secret of the tracer. And Cam had raped Shana, her superior officer. And that was what Shana found unforgivable. She didn't know if Cam had been rescued along with her; she supposed so. She was still angry with Cam about the betrayal, and envious of the reconstructive work Rosa had done to Cam's body; Rosa had been reconstructing Cam's skin at the same time that Kennedy had been destroying Shana's. It just wasn't fair—she'd done her best to try and shield Cam and this was how her kindness was repaid?

She stepped into the shower and stood under the hot stream, letting it soak into her skin, enjoying the warmth, the luxury of standing under hot water. She opened her mouth and drank, suddenly realizing she was thirsty, and didn't care that the water was hot.

The washcloth was still damp from her shower of the night before. Snake Eyes had done a thorough job of washing her hair, but she could still—somehow—feel filth on her skin, feel Kennedy's hands on her, touching her, stroking her legs, her arms, her breasts, her sex. Horrified and angry and disgusted, she soaped the washcloth well and attacked her skin, scrubbing first her arms until the skin was rosy, though she was still careful about the tiny, neat little stitches that closed the nail wounds in her arms ; her legs, and then attacked her thighs with the same viciousness, ignoring the pain that scrubbing her sex was causing, ignoring the burning as she scrubbed at skin still irritated by the bee stings. It wasn't until the water ran pink off her toes, in the bottom of the bathtub, that she realized she'd scrubbed too hard. But the pain was welcome, the stinging of her skin wiped out the phantom impression of Kennedy's hands on her, of Rosa's hands on her and inside her, of Sandra's abuse of Shana's body back there in the Congo, and every one of the Africans who had touched her, beaten her, during the days in the cargo container. She'd have to find out how long she'd been gone…but the thought of the African leg of the trip made her remember the two women who'd tried to help her, of Mathieu, who'd accepted death rather than touch her in a way she didn't want.

Not like Cam had.

She scrubbed at her breasts, biting her lip to keep back her sobs of pain. It hurt, she wanted to put her hands down, to leave them alone, but stronger than that was the feel of Kennedy's hands on her skin, of him holding an angry bee in a pair of tweezers and letting the bee sting her flesh; of holding a bee in those tweezers as she lay helplessly nailed down and cruelly impaled. Shana remembered her screaming howling mindless agony as the bee had stung her, and as she finally turned the water off and lurched out of the tub, unable to see for the tears of pain in her eyes, she saw the clothes she'd been wearing and fell to her knees, biting on the towel in her hands to muffle her sobs.

Snake Eyes' t-shirt and boxers looked back at her, a mute reminder of what she'd lost, because how could he ever touch her again with desire, knowing how filthy she was, how degraded, shamed, humiliated, abused? He'd hugged her, he'd let her cry on his shoulder, he'd carried her to the bed and slept with her, but when she told him the whole story, told him what had been done to her and what she'd allowed to be done to her, he would turn away with disgust and condemnation in his eyes, and oh God, but that was going to hurt the most, out of everything that had happened so far…

She couldn't do it. And yet she knew she had to. But not yet. She could still feel the weakness in her body, feel her legs shaking with small tremors from the last of the drugs, and knew with bone-deep certainty that she could not get through this recovery on her own, she needed help. She hated to take advantage of him, but she couldn't do this alone—it would kill her. If she could avoid talking to him, if he thought she was still traumatized and refused to talk, then maybe she could hold off on that particular conversation until much, much later. Until she could handle this alone. After she told him, he would no longer be by her side, no longer love her. He already saw her as an object of pity, a helpless creature who couldn't take care of herself; he'd had to help her just get into the tub, get to the toilet, and shame filled her. No, he would never look at her with desire again. But if she didn't tell him everything—not just yet—she could hold off the inevitable for a little while. She could pretend for a little while like nothing changed. She hated to use him like this but she didn't have a choice.

She had to sit on the bathmat to put the shirt on, and her legs were shaking as she tried to stand to get the boxers on. Her legs were stick-thin, scabbed over the scratches, and the raw strips of skin around her ankles were going to leave scars and make her even uglier. She suppressed a sob and got into the clothes, then hung her head as she quietly stepped out of the bathroom into her room.

And completely forgot everything in shock.

Snake eyes was hanging photos all over the walls. Well, hanging was too mild a word. Papering was more like it- like a Photomosaic puzzle in which each piece was actually its own tiny picture, he was taping photos of her, of both of them, over every tiny clear inch of her wall. Hundreds of photos. Maybe thousands after he was done. She sat on her bed and stared as he taped one over the light switch next to the door, and turned to her with a brilliant smile on his face.

She burst into tears and buried her face in her pillow.


	9. Chapter 70: Animosity

**Chapter 70: Animosity**

Snake Eyes sat beside Shana's bed and watched her.

He was confused. He had not expected to see her come out of the bathroom looking so…defeated, like she'd lost her best friend, and he'd also not expected her to start crying when she saw the photos. She'd just walked out of the bathroom, saw the photos papering her walls, and started crying.

Since it was so unusual to see her crying, he'd immediately rushed to her side, thinking maybe she'd hurt herself in the tub. But even as he'd tried to hug her, she'd stiffened and ducked away from his arms, her hands coming up in a purely defensive 'don't touch me' gesture. He'd backed off right away, confused, leaving her alone on the bed to cry until she was spent.

It had taken a while; he'd had enough time to continue papering the walls with another box of photos, until every inch was covered. Somewhere in the middle of that operation, she climbed out of bed to look at some of the photos. And they were all of her; her at Coney Island before his accident. Lots and lots and lots of pictures of her up at their cabin in the Sierra Nevadas. Photos of her at base.

He wasn't all that surprised to hear a knock at the door just as he was finishing; Shana paused in her inspection of a photo of her in front of one of the Humvees in the garage (he remembered that one; he'd walked in and seen Shana in a …'spirited discussion'…with Courtney about the mechanical parts all over the garage floor. She really was cute when she blushed) and then Shana herself reached for the doorknob and turned it.

Doc stood on the other side. At the sight of Shana standing there, he broke into a broad grin. "Shana. It's wonderful to see you up and about."

Shana looked at him for a long moment, then hesitantly brought her hands up. _Thank you._

If Doc was nonplussed at the fact that Shana was now awake, aware and communicating, he didn't show it. He simply smiled and said, "I wanted to make a house call and see how you're doing. Can I come in?" Shana stepped back after another long moment and allowed him in.

He pulled over Shana's desk chair and commenced a cursory physical examination; listened to her heart, chest, lungs; took out a tiny vial and needle. "I want to see how your body's adjusting the levels of Oxytocin," he said, and Snake Eyes saw tears glitter in Shana's eyes at the mention of the drug. And then saw her have to fight not to flinch away from Doc's touch. He came over to the side of the bed, intending to hold her so Doc could finish, but at the swift movement Shana's control broke and she cringed away from them both.

Doc immediately sat back, and at a slight nod of his head, Snake Eyes stepped back too. "Shana," Doc said pleasantly, "I need to take a blood sample. I understand if this is uncomfortable, but it does need to be done. I know you got injected with a lot of needles while you were …gone…but you know me. You know I'm not going to hurt you. You know Snake Eyes isn't going to hurt you." Tears filled her eyes at that, and she nodded slowly. "Let him hold you if you can't bring yourself to stay still for this, but I have to do this, Shana, please."

And she slowly held out her arm.

She turned her face away as she saw Doc approaching her with the needle, her entire body tense; Snake Eyes, to distract her, grabbed the small album off the bedside table and put it next to her on the bed, opening it to the first picture. When he'd gone to visit Clayton in the medlabs he's been unaware that Allie walked in behind him in the middle of that, retreated silently to grab a camera, and snapped a picture of Snake Eyes holding Auggie. The sight of a picture of Snake Eyes holding a baby grabbed Shana's attention, and by the time she'd finished studying the baby's features and realized who the baby had to be, Doc was done and pressing a square of gauze to the inside of her elbow.

"Oh, yes," Doc said lightly when he saw her interest. "Liv had her baby. I swear I will never ever have any more babies in my infirmary, ever, because that boy is well on is way to having the same powerful set of lungs his father has! They named him August Alexander Abernathy—big name for a baby, but he seems to be trying to live up to it with his lungs and his impact. Alex and Courtney and Allie are taking turns trying to watch him while Liv's in a coma, but the little guy knows they aren't his mama and just howls for her for a good ten minutes after he wakes up."

And Shana's natural compassion for others took over, as Doc had known it would. _What happened to Olivia? _Shana signed as Doc took her right foot in his lap to check her ankles for signs of infection in the ligature marks around the limb.

"She had a rough time delivering. Everything seemed to be going well until just as August was crowning; then one of the scars she sustained after the tears healed ruptured, and with that much stress on her soft tissue, she just…tore open. She hemorrhaged badly. I had to give her massive transfusions just to keep her alive. Clayton even donated some blood for her." He'd put her right foot down and checked the left ankle, and now gently unwrapped the waterproof bandaging around her lower arms to check on the healing progress of the stitches he'd placed in her arms. Healing well, and she might not even need any tissue grafts, although she was going to be wearing long-sleeved shirts until the angry red of the scars faded.

He was re-wrapping the bandages around her wrists when they all heard a knock on the door of the room. Snake Eyes quickly assessed that everyone was decent and then went to the door, opening it.

Charlie stood there with Cam. She was upright, dressed and walking, though she looked thinner than ever, and was leaning on Charlie a bit. Charlie was supporting her, arms wrapped protectively around the thin shoulders. "We went to the medlabs looking for Doc. Cam's got this pain in her back—she says she's okay but I really wanted to get Doc to look at her." He spotted Doc right behind Snake Eyes and smiled with relief. "There you are. Can you have a look—"

He stopped speaking abruptly as Cam pushed off him, her eyes alight. "Shana," she breathed. Then, louder, "Shana!"

She—well, you couldn't call it a run, but she was definitely moving faster than she had been as she crossed the threshold into Shana's room. "Shana, oh Goddess, you're back!"

Shana rose from the bed and grabbed Cam's wrists, stopping the other woman just before Cam would have hugged her. In disbelief Snake Eyes, Doc, and Charlie watched as Shana took several rapid steps forward, pushing Cam backward as she advanced, until Cam was backed up against the hallway wall outside Shana's door. Shana then turned wordlessly, stepped back into her room and slammed the door.

Charlie stared in astonishment as Shana shoved Cam out into the hallway and slammed the door. She didn't even see she was hurting Cam, who had grimaced in pain when her mutilated back hit the wall opposite the door. The pain in her back was, apparently, eclipsed by the pain in her heart as she threw herself forward at the now-closed door, sobbing. "Shana, Shana, please, please, forgive me, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you! Shana, please!" Her balled fists pounded Shana's door weakly. "Shana, please," she sobbed helplessly as her legs gave out under her and dumped her to her knees in front of the closed door.

Charlie couldn't bear to see her like that. He bent over, gently, trying to take her arms and help her out, but she was suddenly weak, and could barely stand. Or maybe she didn't really want to; there were tears streaming down her face and she was whimpering in despair. "Oh Goddess, Charlie, I knew she was mad at me but I didn't know…I swear I didn't know…I just wanted to help her, I didn't mean to hurt her, I just wanted her to survive long enough for you to find her and bring her home…"

"Her? What about you?" he asked quietly as he gathered her up in his arms and headed for their quarters. Doc knew now that Cam needed to be looked at, and he'd be there as soon as he was done with Shana. Seeing Cam's sudden despair made him want to be angry at Shana, but he just couldn't. He knew Shana had been through a lot, she'd been in captivity longer than Cam, and Cam had gone into this willingly.

"I…gave up. I didn't think I was going to make it out. I…wasn't prepared for how hard it was going to be, Charlie, I thought it was going to be just like living with my Aunt and Uncle but this was so much worse…please don't hate me." She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder.

"Ssh. I could never hate you. Don't be silly. Come on. Let's get you back to bed, you'll feel better." He couldn't be upset with Cam either, no matter how much he wished she'd never come up with this plan. This entire fiasco had taken just as much out of her as it had Shana, and both women were hurting right now. He would just have to have faith that time would heal the rift between the two women, as he would have to have faith that time would heal their wounds, both physical, mental and emotional. "Come on. Let me get you back to bed. Doc'll be by soon to take a look." But she didn't say anything, and he wondered if she even heard him as he laid her down on her side in the bed and covered her gently.

She buried her face in the pillow and cried.

Doc didn't say anything further until he'd finished re-wrapping Shana's wrists. Then, "Shana?"

_Don't say anything._ Shana's sign language was forced out in angry, jerky movements. _Keep her out of my sight. I never want to see her again._

"She was hurt just as badly as you were, Shana. Whatever happened that made you upset with her, she's just as much a victim of it as you were."

_She had a choice. She had lots of choices. She made the wrong ones and now she just has to live with them. Well, she can do it herself. I'm done with her._

"She had choices about what?" Doc's voice was gentle, coaxing, but Shana simply turned her back on both Snake Eyes and Doc. After a moment, Doc beckoned Snake eyes out into the hall and closed the door so they could talk privately.

"What happened? Did she tell you anything that could help us figure out what the hell happened on that island?"

Snake Eyes shook his head. _When I came back here last night she was running a really high fever. I took her to the bathroom to try and cool her off in the shower and she just woke up. Started signing to me. She hasn't said a word but she signs. We haven't really had a chance to talk—she got a_ _bath last_ _night and when she got up this morning she took another shower. And then you came in. Cam and Shana—I don't know what's going on between the two of them._

Doc said quietly, "I don't know if we'll ever know the whole story of what happened to them, there, but I'm going to go see Cam and check up on her. See if you can quiet Shana down and get her to talk to you." He started to turn away, then stopped as something occurred to him. "Oh…I saw a note that said the audio chip Cam had implanted on her scalp has been decrypted and the recordings analyzed. Maybe that'll provide a clue. Would you want to listen in when they're done decoding it?"

Snake eyes nodded emphatically. It would kill him, hearing Shana in pain, but if listening to it would help him understand what she was going through now, he'd deal. Unquestionably.

"I'll let you know." And Doc headed for Cam and Charlie's quarters.

Cam leaned against her desk this time instead of Charlie, despite his protests that he could help her. She seemed torn between wanting him to help her and wanting simply to be left alone, and Doc was alarmed. He'd been worried about Shana's fugue state before—now he was horrified at the look in Cam's eyes, a look of despair and hopelessness and defeat.

The day before she'd finally gotten out of bed and tried a few halting steps, head high, shoulders squared, as if determined to keep going. Now she seemed…smaller somehow, hunched into herself, as though she'd finally given up. And that worried Doc terribly. Her optimistic determination had been carrying her through what he'd considered to be the worst of her recovery—the first few days—and he'd been hoping that optimism would carry her through the rest of it. At the moment it looked like it might not.

"It's okay," he said to Charlie's worried look and to Cam's flinching shoulderblades. "It looks like you simply pulled a couple of stitches here on your back when you climbed into the bathtub. Nothing to really worry about since your skin's mostly all closed now. In fact, I was planning on taking the dressings off today and the stitches out maybe another couple of days. So that's what we're going to do. Go ahead and lie down on the bed."

Charlie helped ease her down on the bed. Doc watched the slow, painful process of getting Cam just to sit, and winced. He knew Shana had been through a lot, and none of them knew exactly what had happened to either one of them, but he still didn't understand Shana's anger at Cam. They'd both been prisoners and had to do what they could to survive, and Cam had clearly taken the worst of the physical punishment. The scar tissue on her torso had torn more quickly, more readily, than regular skin would have, and now he was certain she was going to need to have surgery done because she had scar tissue layered on top of scar tissue all over her back, from her shoulders to the back of her knees. She'd had some deposits of body fat before their captivity, but not much, and that was practically gone now too.

"How are you sleeping?" She shrugged. He raised an eyebrow, tried a different tack. "Are you eating well? Drinking plenty of fluids? Having any nightmares?" when he didn't get any response, he leaned forward deciding to try a direct approach. "What happened when you were on that island? Why is Shana angry with you?"

Cam stirred. "I did what I thought I had to," she whispered. "I knew she'd be mad at me but I couldn't stand to see her like that. They shot her with an overdose, and she was so hungry for it…and they couldn't keep up with the need they created so they were going to let her suffer. Until they brought me in. And I knew I could do it, and she was suffering so much that I figured the least I could do was try to help her. I knew she'd be mad but...I never thought she was going to hate me." Her voice broke on the last word and she buried her face in the pillow to hide her tears. "Please just leave me alone."

Doc stepped into the hallway with Charlie so they could talk. "She's waking with screaming nightmares maybe once or twice a night," Charlie said in answer to Doc's earlier question. "And in the morning she's so exhausted she sleeps through practically half the day. I wake her up to try and get her to eat, but she doesn't have much of an appetite. It's been mostly bread, fruit, and warm broth, mostly bland, simple foods that won't upset her stomach. I don't dare give her anything heavy—I don't want her to throw up. I can't imagine what that would do to her body.

"The slightest movement gives her pain, but I know you can't up the dose until she gains some weight, so I've been sleeping in the cot next to the bed." Doc nodded—he'd seen the folding army cot next to their bed. "She cries a lot. Not really for a reason I can see, just sometimes she just starts crying. All I can do is hold her hand and just be there for her until she goes to sleep. I've been trying to get her to talk to me about what she went through, but she refuses to talk and she's not strong enough for me to push for some of the answers I need to try and help her heal."

"Answers." Doc sighed. "I got a note earlier saying that the analysis of the audio chip is almost done, and I am going to ask Flint if you, Snake Eyes, and I could listen to it first so we can try to reconstruct what happened between them after Cam found Shana. Flint can listen to it later and decide how much of it he can tell the rest of the team, but I think it's important that the three of us sit and listen to it together so we can figure out how to handle their treatment."

"I'll be there," Charlie said. "Just let me know."


	10. Chapter 71: Chip

**Chapter 71: Chip**

Flint raised an eyebrow at the two men striding across the garage bay toward him. "I didn't know you were bringing anyone else, Agent Thompson," he said, the chill in his voice evident.

Before FBI Field Agent Fred Thompson could say a word, the man standing next to him held out a hand. "Dr. George Huang, FBI. I'm sorry for the short notice but I just found out this morning who the agent in charge of this operation was and I confess I rather bullied him into bringing me along, so the fault would be mine." He shook Flint's hand. "ADA Alex Cabot stopped by my office a few days ago to ask my advice on an issue of psychological trauma, and I haven't seen her since so I invited myself along to see if I can help in any way."

Flint looked the man over critically. Small, short, distinctly Chinese, flawless English, hair cut short, dressed in a suit and tie. What was important, however, was that Alex had trusted him enough to talk to him about Shana and Cam's ordeal, and he'd learned from almost a year of working with her that her instincts were good, even if she didn't do everything quite by-the-book.

He shook the man's hand—not warmly, but the implication was there that he would reserve judgment. "All right. I'm worried about both my soldiers, so anything you can do to help, any advice you can give me, would help. Let's go sit in one of the conference rooms, we'll be a bit more comfortable and a bit more private." He'd noticed Courtney trying to be unobtrusive on the other side of Alex's Mustang. "Corporal Krieger, would you please inform Snake Eyes, Spirit, Lady Jaye and Doc to meet us in Conference room three? Thank you. And Hawk, if you can manage it—if he can leave Liv for just a little while. And if you can find him, Duke."

He'd been expecting Thompson; the note he'd gotten the day before said Thompson was going to stop by today with the audio from the chip that had been implanted in Cam's head. The FBI team had downloaded it, analyzed it, gotten what they wanted out of it, and Flint had pushed for the contents being released to them because it would help the Joes figure out what had been done to two of their own, and allow them to figure out the best way to help both women. Doc, Snake Eyes, Charlie were required, as they were the ones closest to the two recovering women, but also Clayton, himself, and Duke—as the commanding officers on this base, this was important to figure out if Command needed to do something to support Shana and Cam's recovery. And Lady Jaye, as the Staff Sergeant here and personnel matters being her jurisdiction, would need to know also. He would have liked to have Alex as well, seeing as how she would be working with the federal prosecutors, but he wasn't sure if the FBI guy knew about Alex's dual affiliations with both the Joes and the New York DA's office and decided he didn't really want to have to explain. At some point, Shana and Cam and Alex would have to sit down with the federal prosecutor, and as he got the rather vague impression that the prosecutor was also a woman, he decided to let the women deal with that themselves and he would take himself out.

God help him, but he really didn't want to know exactly what happened. The very idea made him sick to his stomach, and he'd felt the same dull anger he'd felt when Alex had been tortured in the Congo settle into the pit of his stomach when he saw Shana and Cam being brought in from Fort Hamilton. They'd looked terrible.

He braced himself now as he led the way into the conference room and the FBI guy started setting up his laptop and two small speakers. George Huang must have noticed his discomfort, because he said quietly, "It's never easy to see someone you care about end up in a situation like this. Were you…in a personal relationship with either of them?"

Flint stared at him. "Not a personal relationship, but…" he felt helpless. How did he explain that no, he'd never found Cam attractive, that he'd never even thought about Shana sexually, but at the same time, the relationship, the bonds between all of them, ran so much deeper than commanding officer and subordinate, deeper than friends, but not as deep as a lover? He couldn't think of a civilian equivalent that would make sense, yet he felt he had to try and explain. "The bonds we form here run deeper than just the physical. We care for each other maybe more than we care for our own families." And in the case of Shana and her sister Siobhan, much less. "Cam—Corporal Arlington, the soldier who went deepcover with this chip to find Master Sergeant O'Hara so we could get them both out—would give her life for Shana. in fact she nearly did. The bonds between them are that deep."

He was spared from his awkward, floundering explanation with the conference room door opening. Clayton stepped in, looking like he'd just given himself a rather hurried shave and there were wrinkles in his fatigue jacket. Snake Eyes and Charlie hadn't even bothered getting into their uniforms, and Doc was still dressed in his white coat and had his stethoscope around his neck. Flint, Lady Jaye and Duke were the only ones who were dressed correctly in uniform.

Clayton took a seat at the head of the table, Flint beside him, Duke one seat down, and Lady Jaye on Duke's other side. Flint wished they were a little more equal in rank and she could sit beside him, because he had a feeling this was going to be difficult for her, but there was no help for it.

"This was extremely difficult for our tech and audio people to listen to. The whole recording is available in sections, of course with long silences where there is no sound and I assume…Corporal Arlington, that's the girl who had the chip, right?...we assumed that those silences are when she was asleep or unconscious. The rest of what we heard, though..." he cued up an audio program, with the audio visible as thin and fat zig-zagging lines on the screen—Flint didn't care what they were called, he just wanted to know what they contained.

"An owner abandon, eh?" came the voice from the computer—the slave dealer back at the Amsterdam market. "What's it's name?" Out the corner of her eye, Allie saw Charlie's fingers curl into a fist at hearing someone so casually call his wife 'it'.

And then Cam's voice; "Master Singletary called this slave hole because that is all this slave is good for—"

The FBI agent hastily cut that off. "Let's skip that part. Our audio techs were very upset by this part. Here's when Arlington found O'Hara."

Another voice, male. "Is this one damaged but obedient enough for you? What do you want her for anyway?"

A different voice. "She'll work. We got ourselves a fighter back there, real high-priced merchandise. I think Boss thinks if he gets another girl and threatens the meat in front of her she might at least agree to do what she's told."

The first voice again. 'She's all yours." Then came the sound of heavy footsteps, the sound of a bolt being shot back from the door, and a split second of silence before they heard a muffled cry. And then Cam's voice, full of relief and anguish and a whole host of other emotions. "Shana!"

And in that moment Allie understood something. Cam loved Shana. The bonds of friendship between the two of them had cemented into love, not in the romantic sense but Cam saw Shana as a sort of surrogate sister. It was even more evident in the sound of her voice as she pleaded with the guards, "Please, please, don't hurt her, please, I'll do anything…" and Jesus, but it hurt hearing Cam beg like that. Allie shot a sympathetic glance at Charlie, and saw he, too, was affected; were those tears? She averted her eyes hastily, wanting to give him a semblance of privacy.

"The guard held her at knifepoint until O'Hara went under a shower and cleaned herself up. Then he held O'Hara at knife point until Arlington showered and cleaned up. And then there's silence for a while, we assume she was allowed to sleep. The next sound is a guard telling her to feed O'Hara, since they evidently didn't want to risk unchaining her for even a moment." He cued up a different section of audio on the screen, this section full of jagged spikes. He started the playback at the edge of one of those spikes, and they heard Cam screaming in terror and panic, "Shana! SHANA!" Incoherent screaming, and then a male voice panted, "Jesus, bring them both, we can't keep the bidders waiting!"

A period of silence. Then, Shana: "Cam!" Cam called her name back, and then Shana screamed.

Allie choked on a sob. What had they done to make Shana scream like that? An inhuman-sounding, animal howl of agony, followed closely by a second one. And then Cam screamed. Her voice was slightly deeper than Shana's, huskier; a side effect, Flint now knew, from her lungs and throat having been burned; but it was a blessing now because her voice was distinctly different from Shana's. Even her screams were different.

The screaming went on for an eternity until quite suddenly, a cool, masculine voice said "Stop." And Allie recognized the voice instantly—there wasn't a single person on Joe base who wouldn't, now; since they were following Damien Kennedy's news stories with a single-mindedness that bordered on mass obsession. "I have never seen such spirit from any other slave here. These two must be remarkable indeed. Are you that determined to stay together?"

Cam's voice, slightly shaky, huskier than usual, but still recognizable. "We're friends. We knew each other growing up. We were practically sisters."

"Well then, since the scarred one is just so much damaged meat, why not allow the two of them to stay together? Sell them together. It might even be amusing to pit these two sisters against each other."And a chorus of yes's came back from what sounded like a sizable audience. The auction, then, and there were a lot of people there. Sick bastards. Allie tried not to cry, blinked back tears—and then fought harder as she heard that same cool voice offer two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the two women. "Sold to Master Damien Kennedy for two hundred fifty thousand dollars!"

"That's it," Allie said heavily into the silence. "He can't claim that one of his flunkies on the island brought her to the island without his knowledge. We have him on tape actually buying Cam and Shana."

"And his subordinates can't claim to have been ignorant. Here's the first entrance of Kennedy's pet mad doctor, Hans Keil." He cued the audio, and they heard Kennedy introducing the women to Hans, then threatening Cam if Shana didn't submit to the exam. In silence they heard him discussing the condition of her teeth, the fact that she had a couple of fillings, and concluded his diagnosis with the statement that Shana was 'almost perfect and in mint condition.' And then soft sounds of pain from Cam as Kennedy told Keil he didn't have to be gentle. The sounds increased to screams, as Kennedy threatened to hurt Shana if Cam resisted. And, from the sounds of it, Cam didn't, but her cries seemed to go on for a long, long time…"Stop," Allie finally rasped, unable to bear the sounds. "Stop it. Please. Can we go on?" She saw Dash's sympathetic glance from where he sat two seats to her right, but she was too miserable to care.

"We can. Nothing more on that section except Kennedy describing how he got them out of Amsterdam. He dressed them in military uniforms, drugged them into a coma, then put them in coffins and told Customs he was taking soldiers home to bury. It apparently worked, because when they next wake up they are at the island. Here's one part you need to hear. Kennedy's asking them how they know each other, and when he can't get a straight answer, he drugs Shana." he cued the tape.

Damien: "What is your real name?"

Shana: "Shana."

Damien: "Are you a slave?"

Shana: "No."

Damien: "Where were you captured?"

Shana: "Africa."

Damien: "Where do you live?"

Shana: "Fort Wadsworth, New York."

Shock rippled around the room. Shana had told Kennedy the location of their base. "She told him. He just had no idea how valuable that information was—and how much some of our enemies would have paid for that information. To him it was useless." And then she lapsed into Gaelic. To almost everyone—including, apparently, Kennedy—it made no sense, but Allie looked like she was about to faint. "She just told them everything about us. In Gaelic. That we're a classified military project and we're under the chaplain's school."

"But he didn't know because he doesn't know Gaelic. Clever. She knew she might eventually reveal something she shouldn't, so she took care to think it and speak it in a language few other people would know. We taught her that. She remembered." The FBI agent was grimly pleased. "All right. This next section—they tried the drugs on Arlington. And Arlington is allergic to the drugs." He cued the recording.

Shana, sounding frantic. "She's allergic, she's stopped breathing, it's called anaphylaxis, she's going to die, please, please let me in with her!" A grating, metallic sound, and then Shana's voice. 'Cam, Cam, sweetheart, speak to me, please, Cam!" And hearing Shana's voice as she said 'sweetheart' made Allie swallow her tears again. Shana loved Cam, too…like a sister. Probably loved her more than she loved her own blood sister Siobhan. "You're not dying on me, I swear! Come on, Cam, breathe, damn you, breathe!" And then they heard a raspy, deep breath, and Cam was breathing again. Only, to Allie's ear, something sounded different; she leaned in to listen, saw Doc doing the same thing.

"Her wind broke," Doc sad grimly. "Her body was fighting so hard to get air in that she strained something in her lungs, her chest. When she's well enough I'll do some tests, but something happened to her lungs. I expect she's overstrained a muscle in her diaphragm or her chest, something that will affect the elasticity." He finished quietly, "I don't know if she'll be able to pass the physical tests necessary to get back on duty. The run may be impossible for her now." Then, even more quietly, 'She may not be able to dance again."

"No," the strangled sound had come from Charlie. "Dancing is her life. If that's taken away…" He didn't finish, but Allie knew what he was thinking. Cam's dancing was the one constant in her life, the only thing that brought her joy. If she lost that…what would that do to her psychologically?

"She may recover. I won't know until I do the tests. Don't think about it now, focus on her recovery." Doc sounded forcedly cheerful.

The FBI Agent sighed. "There's not much more on this section. The doctor raped Cam, then Kennedy tried to rape Shana but apparently couldn't perform. He told Shana he'd let her in to take care of Cam if she—if she used her mouth…and she did and he let her in with Cam." He cued up another section of audio. "And then here…they escaped."

"They escaped?" Hawk leaned forward.

Agent Thompson nodded. "They escaped. They shattered the security camera that was placed in their cells and fiddled with the wires until they got the door open, then got out of the mansion through the laundry door and hid in a seaside cave for three days. Shana was going through some wicked withdrawal, and Cam stayed by her, dousing her with seawater to keep her from going hyperthermic, going out and scavenging for food, bringing it back. One of the native islanders helped her—voiceprint analysis matched the voice to a woman named Ana, who was the first one to greet our forces when we landed on the island and helped getting the materials that got Shana off the cross she was crucified to."

"Three days. They got a break of three days." It was a small consolation to all the Joes. "How did they get caught again?"

"Cam tried to get Shana onto Kennedy's yacht to steal it and get help. They were captured off the boat." Agent Thompson swallowed. "I'm not going to play that section—it's gruesome—but they whipped Cam until she passed out. And when the girls woke up, that Italian woman, Rosa Capelletti, cut squares of skin from Cam's leg to create tissue grafts—Cam awake when she started and Shana was forced to watch the whole operation. Then Rosa apparently tortured Shana. And then all you hear is Shana screaming for a while as Rosa implanted some sort of pain-causing device in her body. The next thing you hear is them offering Shana food…but she was forced to crawl to it and eat without her hands. They electrocuted her until she complied. And they slipped some drug into her food, something that one of our techs said 'heightened her sexual awareness'—I'm not getting into the rest of that.

"There's a period of silence after that—they were apparently left alone to sleep and recover—and then he asks them again how they know each other. When he doesn't get the answer he wants he orders Shana to whip Cam. Shana refuses, so he has one of the guards whip Cam with a barbed-wire whip until Shana's so horrified by the damage Cam's taking that she takes the lighter whip and hits Cam with it until she passes out."


	11. Chapter 72: Shana

**Chapter 72: Shana**

"This is monstrous. Barbaric. Using the girls against each other." Hawk's words summed up the way they all felt.

"But they separated the two women for a little while here, and the next thing we hear is the native islander woman talking to Cam, giving her water. She can't untie her, let her go, but Cam gives her your number," the agent nodded to Hawk, "And asks the woman to call you and tell you they need pickup. The woman agrees and disappears just as that Italian bitch shows up and unties Cam and has the guards drag her inside until they reach Shana. She's hypersexed from an overdose of Oxytocin, and Rosa says they could apparently just leave her to suffer or Cam could do something about it by…by taking care of the need. And…Cam does. She begs Shana to please not hate her for it...and she does what they tell her to."

"So that's why Shana hates Cam right now." Charlie burst out. At Duke, Clayton, and Allie's uncomprehending look, he said quietly, "Cam was experiencing pain and I wanted her to see Doc. He was in Shana's quarters, and Cam went to hug Shana—and Shana threw her out of the room." Snake Eyes and Doc both nodded in silent confirmation. "I couldn't imagine what could have happened to make her that angry…but now I understand."

"She shouldn't be angry. Cam did what she thought she had to do in order to keep them both alive," Allie said automatically. "Military expediency, and both Shana and Cam know that. You do what you have to in order to survive, and don't regret it later."

"It's easy to say that, but it's not as easy to practice," George Huang spoke for the first time, leaning forward on his elbows over the conference table. "Shana was subject to torture over a period of a couple of months, mixed with drugs that also altered her perception of reality. Then that perception was magnified by the addition of a lot of pain, and violation in the most intimate way possible for a woman, and all of that happened very quickly and all she had time to do was react. I doubt she had much time to think through what had happened to her, to analyze her thoughts and feelings and impressions and start to sort through what was magnified by the drugs and what was actual reality. Depending on what kinds of drugs she was given, she may well have been hallucinating through some of this, so her sensory perceptions are going to be skewed. Her perception is likely that she actually enjoyed her friend's sexual violation of her, leading to confusion over her own identity and her own feelings, especially if she was in a committed, monogamous heterosexual relationship."

Allie tried to fight down her revulsion. While a part of her objected to anyone talking about her friend in such blatantly sexual terms, she did understand that some of this was stuff they needed to hear in order for them to help Shana through this recovery. It was going to take a concerted effort from all of them to get both Shana and Cam through this.

The FBI Agent waited until they fell silent before he went on and cued another section of audio. "I'm not going to play this one for you, since there's little of significant value. Rosa injected Cam's throat with some kind of drug to temporarily take away her voice, and then with a paralyzing agent. And while Cam was awake on the table, voiceless and unable to move or fight, Capelletti stripped the scar tissue from Cam's scarred right breast and replaced it with skin cultured from the tissue grafts she took from Cam's leg earlier on in their captivity. Cam passes out twice, and Rosa injects her with stimulants to keep her awake. She makes several comments about Cam's facial expressions as she reconstructs Cam's breast."

_Cam was awake for the whole operation?_ The movement of Snake eyes' hands was sudden, quick; a comment shocked out of him by the mere thought of the brutality that must have entailed. Allie translated for the benefit of the FBI guy and George Huang.

"For most of it," the FBI agent said gently. "She makes a comment later when she can't revive Cam again, 'Oh well. I was almost done anyway.'"

"Bitch." Charlie's skin was several shades darker due to anger. No one bothered to even look reproving at the language—no one could argue with it.

"There's a long period of silence, about a day. She was obviously unconscious for most of it, and they mercifully let her sleep. The next sound he hear is Kennedy." He cued the audio.

Kennedy: "Now you'll tell me how you and the Testarossa know each other."

Cam's voice, very faint and weak. "We…grew up together…in New York."

Kennedy's voice, sharper. 'You have a bit of a New York accent. She on the other hand speaks no language we've ever heard and we've heard a bit of a Southern accent when she was drugged and rambling. So try again."

Cam: "We grew up together in New York." There was a scream, then; Cam's voice, and the sound of clanking chain.

Color drained from Duke's face. "This was the incident the drone videotaped. When they threw Cam off the fishing platform and nearly drowned her. This is what they were after? This is why they did that? They wanted to know how Cam and Shana knew each other?"

"Yes. Shana finally tells them that she and Cam worked on a humanitarian mission in Africa. Mentions a woman named Sandra Velasquez, and apparently that's enough to validate her story because Kennedy acknowledges that Sandra worked for him."

"So we can establish chain of custody." Hawk said quietly. "We last knew Shana was in Africa and had killed Sandra. But then she turns up on Kennedy's private island. So we can establish a chain of custody and eliminate any possibility that Kennedy will claim he didn't know his island was being used to keep slaves."

Agent Thompson cleared his throat as he cued another piece of audio. "I know that Shana was angry at Cam for the rape, but this next piece didn't help matters any either."

Cam, tentative: "S-Shana?"

Shana: "It's okay Cam. Lie down and rest. Save your strength." To those who were used to hearing her voice, she sounded conflicted, like she still wanted to be upset but couldn't bring herself to completely stop caring for her friend.

Cam: "Can't…can't keep going …nothing left." Every person in the room heard the despair, defeat and helplessness in her voice. "It's up to you."

Shana: "What's up to me? What are you talking about?"

Cam, breathing hard, and now that harsh rasp was even more evident. Allie tried not to think about the possibility that Cam might not be able to dance again from the lung damage—she was sure it would kill Cam. "I wasn't captured…in the Congo. Allie and Conrad…inserted me into the Amsterdam slave market…to find you. There's a tracer chip…like Alex's…implanted next to my ear. As soon as we got here it started a two week countdown. At the end of that countdown…they'll come to get us."

Shana: "They know where we are? They're coming to get us?" Oh, the hope, the relief, the anticipation in her voice. Hope gave her new strength.

Cam (and Allie could hear the smile in her voice. "Yes."

Shana's voice sharpened. "Wait. You haven't said anything about this till now."

Cam: "I…couldn't tell you. I couldn't risk…them knowing."

Shana (and now they could all hear the anger): "You trusted yourself to keep the information secret but you didn't trust me. I'm your commanding officer, Corporal Arlington, and you couldn't trust me? Why the hell are you telling me now if you can't trust me?" And Shana never swore.

Cam: "I don't think I'm going to make it."

Shana, now furious: "You're supposed to tell me these things, Arlington. And you didn't. Didn't think you could trust me, huh? Fine. Don't talk to me again. You're on your own now." And the next sound was Cam crying softly.

Allie sucked in a breath. "But she couldn't trust Shana to keep it a secret. Shana was being drugged and she'd already spilled some of our secrets. It's just luck that Kennedy doesn't know Gaelic. I'm pretty sure Cam has heard Shana and I talking and she could have picked up enough words to know that Shana unintentionally let slip a lot of secrets."

The FBI Agent said quietly, "If she told Shana, Shana would have been thinking about that all the time, obsessively, wondering how much time was passing and when the rescue was going to come. During one of the sessions with the drugs it's very likely that she would have let that slip, and if she had both of them would have been killed instantly. And their bodies dumped. You would never have found them. But since Cam herself is allergic to the drugs, and they obviously avoided using them on her again after that first bout with anaphylaxis, it was best for everyone that Cam kept it to herself. I have to commend her for her quick thinking and initiative."

"I was considering giving her a commendation for valor and heroism," Clayton said.

"I would definitely say she deserves it," Huang said now. "As I understand it, obedience to a commanding officer is one of the things that's drilled into a soldier. The fact that both women are friends would have made it difficult for Cam to have kept it a secret, yet she was intelligent enough to see that it would put both their lives in danger if she did, so she chose to serve the greater good and kept it secret. I would guess that Shana isn't aware of what she herself said under the drugs, or she would have realized it by now."

"Should we tell her?"

Huang looked troubled. "That I don't know. I don't know what stage she's at in the recovery process, but at the moment I don't think it would be a good idea. She's probably struggling with self-confidence and self-esteem issues, and telling her she violated her nondisclosure oath, even under drugs, is just going to reinforce that feeling of worthlessness and self-doubt. I'd wait until she's a little stronger." He turned to Charlie. "If you have a few minutes, I'd like to talk to you before you go back. You could maybe explain to Cam that Shana's mentally fragile right now, she doesn't know what she's saying and it's not a reflection on Cam herself—"

"Why don't you have that talk now?" Clayton heaved himself up from the table. "We have a good idea of what happened to put both Shana and Cam in the state they are now, and we don't really need to hear anything else. The rest of what's on that tape would be best saved for the prosecution's case, when Shana and Cam are both strong enough to handle hearing it and can fill in what happened in between those silences better." Everyone around the table nodded emphatically, and Agent Thompson took out the flash drive with the information on it and handed it to Allie. "Please give this to whoever is serving as your liaison between yourself and the Federal prosecutor's office. I do need to get back to my office, but George Huang has the security clearance necessary to come here on his own, so I'll leave him to offer his assistance with your peoples' recovery."

Snake Eyes simply pointed mechanically to the things he wanted the mess hall servers to put on Shana's tray and his own. He knew her so well, had eaten with her for so long that he knew automatically what she liked and he didn't have to pay much attention. His mind was too busy trying to process everything they'd learned that morning about what Shana and Cam had gone through. He understood why Shana felt the way she did, but he couldn't agree with her, not when he thought about Cam lying on a table trapped in her own body, unable to move or even scream as her breast was skinned and tissue grafted. His spine crawled with loathing that the memory of the dark Italian woman, and hearing Kennedy's interactions with Shana had fueled the black fury banked deep in him. Now wasn't the time to let that go—he had to focus on getting Shana well first—but Kennedy had broken every law concerning human decency and kindness and Snake Eyes was going to exact retribution for it. He didn't know when, or how, but he would get vengeance for Shana.

'Shana told them a lot about us.' He knew a few words of Gaelic from listening to Shana talk; most of his comprehension of the language encompassed swearwords that Shana let slip during workouts and training. And during the few arguments he had with her. He'd recognized the language when he'd heard her voice start speaking, but not what she'd said; that was a bit much beyond his comprehension.

But Allie had known. She'd heard. And he had no doubt that Shana had indeed let slip a few secrets she shouldn't have; he was relieved that everyone seemed to take it for granted that it had been the fault of the drugs and pain and didn't blame her or hold her responsible. In fact, the FBI agent had been pleased that she remembered some long-ago lesson about thinking in different languages…

Charlie had gotten Alex to sit with Cam, and so he hadn't felt too bad about taking some time out to talk to George Huang about Cam's state of mind. Snake Eyes, however, had left Shana sleeping, and he knew she'd wake up soon, and he'd decided to try taking some food to her. As thin as she'd become, she had to be hungry.

He also wanted to try something. It would be awkward for Doc to have to come to her quarters to treat her now that she was upright and moving, so Snake Eyes was going to try and entice her out of her room. He stopped in front of her quarters, set the tray down beside her door, and knocked, then quickly sat down and picked up his own tray.

Shana opened the door—as he'd known she would. What she didn't expect was to see him sitting next to her door with a big grin, a full tray on the floor beside him, and a hand extended in an invitation to 'join me'. She shook her head, stepping back and closing her door.

He tranquilly picked up his fork and speared a bite of potato.

He was almost done with the potatoes when the door opened again, cautiously; Shana. She looked at him, to which he responded with a polite smile, and again invited her to join him.

She slammed her door again.

The third time she opened the door, she ignored his invitation and crouched in the doorframe, trying to extend one thin arm to grab the edge of the tray with one hand and pull it in the door. He wordlessly put a hand on top of the tray and slid it across the floor just out of her reach, his meaning clear; _come out here and eat with me or you're not eating at all_. Not that he would actually withhold the food; if she didn't make up her mind to come eat with him by the time he was done, he'd take it in and let her eat.

She slammed the door again.

He finished his potatoes, drank some water, was about to start on the steak sitting on his plate while at the same time wondering if he was pushing too hard, too soon, when her door opened again. And this time she was dressed not in his t-shirt and boxers, but in his t-shirt and a pair of her own comfortable black knit yoga pants. He stifled his inward cheer of victory as she inched out into the hallway, then sat down with her back to the slightly-ajar door, as if ready to retreat back into her room at the first sound, and warily picked up her tray.

A couple of the Joes, Mainframe and Jammer, walked by, but to their credit they didn't act as if there was anything strange about seeing Snake Eyes and Shana sitting outside Shana's room door eating dinner. Snake Eyes got a friendly nod of greeting and Shana got a cheery 'hey, good to see you up!' and then the Joes continued on to wherever they were headed, although Snake Eyes was willing to bet as soon as they got around the bend in the hall they'd be bolting for the Rec and Mess to tell everyone what they'd just seen. He didn't care; he was watching her intently out the corner of his eye, checking out her reactions. She was wary at first, then when nothing else happened and Recondo walked by with nothing more than a noncommittal nod and a smile, she relaxed and started eating with single-minded intensity. Snake Eyes was almost sorry he hadn't gotten more; she was starving, to judge by the way she was tucking into the food, and when she finished the courses she picked up the chocolate brownie that was offered at the mess for dessert and bit into it. Her eyes closed in an expression of bliss and she smiled.

Smiled widely. And for a moment, despite the bruises and the thinness, she was Shana again, the same Shana he lived with, argued with, and loved fiercely with every fiber of his being. His Shana.

He quietly took the brownie off his plate and put it on hers. She shot him a look, indecipherable for a moment, then ate the rest of her brownie in one big bite, then picked up his and polished it off too in three neat little bites. Then, still wordlessly, she got up and disappeared back into her room.

But the door didn't slam.

Snake Eyes allowed himself a small smile of victory as he collected both plates and headed back to drop them off in the mess.


	12. Chapter 73: Push

**Chapter 73: Push**

"So how are you feeling?" Alex asked cheerfully as she sat down in the desk chair next to Cam's bed.

Cam gave her a small smile. It felt forced; she really didn't feel like smiling. "Okay I guess. Doc says my back is doing okay and he'll take the dressings off in a few days to let the wounds 'breathe.' He still picks on me about my weight, but I really don't feel like eating."

"It'll get better," Alex said quietly. "Now as I understand it, Charlie and Snake Eyes were called to the conference room to listen to the analysis of the audio chip you had implanted in your head."

"I know. Charlie told me. Goddess, but I hated that thing—gave me constant headaches."

Alex nodded in sympathy. "I had one of those in my head, so I know what that feels like. Are you feeling any pain now?"

Cam wanted to be honest, but she wasn't sure if Alex really wanted to know, so she just gave a little shrug (wincing at how it pulled the stitches on her back, and said, "I can handle it."

Alex wasn't really paying much attention, and didn't catch the slight hesitation; her mind was already busy with what she'd come here to talk about. "After Duke and Allie came back without you we took Leo Yu to arraignment. Judge Petrovsky granted bail and three of his friends were just getting ready to post it for him when the SVU detectives walked in. It turned out that all three of the people who were trying to post bail for Yu were in the ledger your Aunt and Uncle kept—David Biehl, Reginald Chatham, and Devon Ross."

Cam froze at the mention of the names. "David Biehl—Master David," she whispered. "I…remember him…he was the worst out of the three. Master Devon didn't really want to have sex with me; he brought schoolgirl uniform type clothes and made me wear them and would give me 'spankings' for being naughty—but he gave me those spankings on top of my clothes and never undressed me, and he never raped me—my crying after a 'spanking' would get him off and he would come all over the clothes. Master Reggie would have sex with me, but he wasn't violent; he was relatively gentle and he was also…kind of small…he didn't hurt so much when he raped me." She took a shuddering breath. "Master David was the worst. He wanted to see me cry and beg and scream, and he enjoyed hurting me."

"Can you tell me a little about what he did?" Alex had her notepad out and was scribbling notes. Cam saw, winced; she really didn't want to have this conversation now, she was tired and in pain—Doc said he couldn't up the dose on her pain meds until she gained a little weight, but she simply couldn't eat—she had no appetite. And worst of all was the pain in her heart at the fact that Shana hated her, loathed her. But…she'd already been violated, in the worst ways possible for the worst reasons, and what was one more, what difference was answering Alex's questions going to make? At least Alex would be doing it for all the right reasons, even if Cam deep down knew she wasn't ready for the firestorm of shame and guilt and pain the memories were going to cause her.

"Master David took full advantage of everything at the cabin. Hunting, fishing, camping, hiking. He even added a couple of activities—'campfire' and 'obstacle course' and 'horseback riding'."

Alex forced herself not to flinch. She couldn't imagine how that must feel…"Okay. Thank you for that, I'll add it to the list of things I'll charge him with. Can you give me any information about what the other twenty-three people we've rounded up so far did to you?"

"T-t-twenty-three?" The incredulous note in Cam's voice brought Alex's eyes up from her pad.

"Yes. Twenty-three. Twenty-three of the names in your aunt and Uncle's ledger matched names in Yu's client files. At the moment they are charged with possession of child porn, since they all had DVDs of their activities at the cabin—I haven't reviewed all of them so I don't know what's on therm. I was saving that in case you didn't come back, but since you are back, we can proceed with trial and you can face them and tell everyone what they did to you, get justice for yourself."

"Twenty-three." Cam was pale. "Alex…I don't know if I can do this. Leo Yu, yes…he's the one who broke me, that first time when he told me to lick his lollipop and I refused and he…he hurt me enough to make me realize I didn't have a choice but to listen to what they said…but Alex, I don't…I can't testify…twenty-three times." Her voice broke on the last word.

Alex shook her head. "We've come too far along in the investigation for you to back out now, Cam. I know you feel like you can't do this, but you have to—not only for yourself but also for the sake of any of the other children they may have molested over the years. I don't think you were the only one, and you know you're not the only slave—you talked about some of them bringing other slaves to see you."

Cam's eyes filled with tears; for a moment she wasn't thinking about the other slaves, from when she was fifteen—she was thinking about what she'd done to Shana, about how she'd raped her best friend and commanding officer, and how that was going to cost her the only female best friend she'd ever had in her life. She felt intensely, terribly, horribly guilty about the whole thing; yes, she'd done it to try and save Shana from suffering, but while she couldn't find it in her to regret what she'd done, to regret that she'd broken the drugged barrier inside her friend, she was horrified at her own actions and ashamed of them.

Yes, Shana had close friendships with the other women here at base, with Allie and Courtney and Alex and Liv—but she was in a committed relationship with Snake Eyes and Cam had never seen a hint of any possibility of Shana liking girls that way. She also knew Shana was Christian—Irish Catholic, and Cam knew the Catholic prejudices against homosexuality. It was one of the things that had drawn her to her chosen faith—Wiccans didn't judge, and didn't care what you did and who you did it with. As long as you weren't hurting anyone and everyone involved consented, you were free to form relationships with whoever you wanted.

One of the clients that visited frequently was a minister and his wife, and they had this fantasy whereby she would dress in a schoolgirl uniform and read the Bible aloud until the minister got so aroused that he would pull her out of her seat and bend her over right there; then his wife would come storming in and scream at Cam about being a seductress and a temptress and needing to punish Cam for the good of her eternal soul. Cam would strip, be tied down over the desk top, and be paddled and caned. It was a carefully choreographed scene, and Cam herself had wondered several times if they were both just playacting, but she'd been in the middle of the Bible-reading part of the scene when his cellphone had gone off and he'd told someone on the other end that he was at a religious retreat and teaching a Bible-study class and cam had inferred from that that he really was a minister—and she had pulled away from Christianity. Because the passages she'd been forced to read aloud were all on the evils of temptation, on adultery and fornication and lying with someone who wasn't your wife, and there was a grotesque irony between what she was reading and what they both were doing to Cam herself.

"…Cam?" She jerked out of her musings with a start; Alex was peering at her over her dark-framed glasses. "Earth to Cam. There you are. You weren't there for a moment."

"I'm…sorry, I was thinking about something else. What did you say?"

"I have a list of everyone I'm currently prosecuting in connection with Yu's activities and I want to run down that list with you so I can get a feel for what to charge them with. I can get these convictions far easier with your testimony than without. And you promised me you'd help."

"But…I know I did…but Alex, I don't think…Some of the clients would insist that I be hooded, so they never saw my face and none of them ever asked me my age. How were they to know I wasn't willing?" She knew she was grasping at straws here, but she was desperate to avoid this. She couldn't do this, she just couldn't. Twenty-three people—each a separate jury, a separate story, and she would have to tell everyone what these people had done to her twenty-three times… "Please, Alex." Her eyes begged for understanding.

"You have to help me get these people, Cam. If not justice for your sake, then justice for every other slave they have or had, for every other child they may have ever harmed. These people rarely ever stop at just one, and some of the ones who came when you were fifteen didn't come when you were seventeen; their tastes run to the younger end of the spectrum. By convicting every single one of these bastards, we can keep them from every hurting a child again. They'll be convicted of child molestation and child porn and go to jail and when they get out they'll have to register with the sex offender registry and that will limit the contact they have with children for the rest of their lives."

"It'll limit the contact they have with regular children. They won't be able to get jobs at schools and parks and places where they could come into contact with kids. But what about the invisible children, like me, Alex? How do you keep them away from the children like me who legally don't exist? The ones who slip through the system—it's as easy as moving from one place to another. Everyone in upstate New York assumed I'd gone back to Korea, and other people, like my dance teacher in New York, were told I'd moved upstate with my Aunt and Uncle. And no one thought to check, and my school never thought to wonder why my Aunt and Uncle didn't request copies of my school records sent to the new school. The child protective services who were supposed to keep visiting us regularly—I rarely ever saw them. That's the problem with the system, Alex, it's set up to protect documented, verified children, but not the undocumented invisible children like me."

"But anything you can help us with is a start. And, Cam…you promised you'd testify for me. So I could close the case. You promised."

She couldn't argue with that.

"All right. The first name I have on my list is Daryl Block."

"He whipped, beat and raped me."

"Ritchie Curry."

Cam winced. "Everything. He did everything."

"Anita Curtis."

Cam gasped. "How did you find her?"

Alex said, "She came with Mr. Curry on a couple of occasions, and then came twice by herself. Do you remember her?"

Tears stung Cam's eyes, and she wanted to curl up and hide as sobs threatened to tear her apart. She didn't want to think about Mistress Anita, ever ever again—it was that woman who had first forced a young Cam Arlington to have sex with a woman, who had forced Cam's head between her legs and taught the teenager how to pleasure a woman. Cam had been revolted and disgusted by the whole procedure then, although successive sessions with Mistress Anita—and many other women, some of them slaves like herself—had desensitized her somewhat, and it had been that unwilling tutelage that had helped her care for Shana later, however much Shana hated it, Cam knew it had released Shana from the torture of the drug and she couldn't bring herself to hate what she'd done. She felt she'd done what she did for all the right reasons.

"I don't—I can't—" She was struggling with her sobs, and her back was on fire with the involuntary movement, and she was trying to bite them back, to calm herself, and she couldn't do it. "Alex…please…can we do this later, not now, please…" and the pain in her back was now making her cry.

And then her room door opened, and Charlie stepped in, and Cam barely saw with tear-blurred eyes, the short Chinese man behind Charlie. All she saw was Charlie, the one person in the world who didn't force her to do things she didn't want to do, and he swiftly crossed the room and wrapped her in his arms. She hugged him back as tightly as she could, shaking, sobbing into his shoulder, and Charlie looked with concern at her. "Cam, baby, it's okay, I'm right here, stop crying, baby, your back is bleeding again…" she knew it was, she was crying as much in pain as she was over emotional anguish, but she couldn't stop.

Doc took one look at the seepage on the bandages covering Cam's back and turned to Alex. "What did you say to her?"

"I was running down the list of names to prosecute for trials concerning Yu's activity. Wanted to find out from her what each one did so I know what to charge him with."

Doc took one look backward at Cam curled up in the middle of the bed, and Charlie trying to calm her, and pointed at the door. "Out in the hall. Let's let her calm down." His voice was quiet, but as Alex and Doc joined George Huang out in the hall, Doc unleashed his quiet temper. "You stressed her out, got her upset, and she is bleeding again. At this point getting upset is counterproductive, she has stitches everywhere and she's been under enormous amounts of stress and she is mentally fragile. Damn it, Alex, I know your court case is important but it's not that important!"

"I wasn't trying to upset her. If she didn't want to discuss it she would have said so. She didn't so I assumed she was good. She doesn't have a good picture of her own limitations." Alex didn't even think about what she was saying.

George Huang broke in, his voice a calm counterpoint to the angry ones around him. "Dr. Steen, Alex didn't mean to get Cam emotionally upset. It wasn't deliberate, she's a lawyer and her way of coping with everything that's happened is to push for justice. Her concern for other possible victims out there just got in the way of realizing just how upset Cam got." And to Alex, "Cam Arlington is emotionally fragile right now. Her body's suffered an enormous shock, this was worse than she thought it was going to be before she left, and her best friend currently hates her for some perceived transgressions during their captivity which weren't actually her fault, but Shana can't understand that right now. There's nothing that can't wait until Cam's stronger."

"The trial dates have been set. I only have three more weeks to prepare for Kennedy's trial, and then Leo Yu's trial will start a few weeks afterward and the trials of his codefendants."

"And if you don't stop pushing, Alex, she's never going to make it to those trials. She'll die of stress and her fragile physical condition way before you get her in the door of the courthouse." George Huang folded his arms, and despite his short stature and quiet nature, there was something implacable and unmovable about him. Alex must have sensed that, because she frowned, then turned and walked off down the hall without another word.

George let out a sigh. "Alex is passionate about her work, and sometimes it tends to give her tunnel vision about others. Come on. I want to have a talk with Cam, see if I can help her with some of her issues." Doc nodded wordlessly and both men turned to enter Cam and Charlie's room.


	13. Chapter 74: Fragile

**Chapter 74: Fragile**

Cam was calmer by the time George and Doc came in, but she was still sniffling. Doc was alarmed by how pale she was and how little strength she seemed to have; while her recovery till now seemed mostly to have been uphill, she'd been making slow but measurable progress. Since the encounter with Shana, however, it looked like she'd relapsed, gone backwards, and he was very, very worried about that.

"Cam, this is George Huang. He's here as a trauma psych specialist." He made a brief introduction, then said, "Here, let's take a look at your back."

Charlie sat on the edge of the bed, and Cam sat gingerly facing him, leaning forward so Doc could peel the wound dressings from her back. Underneath, she looked worse than ever.

After having heard the audio feed, he knew that she'd been whipped at least twice; once as punishment for their escape, then again a few days later when she'd been flogged with the barbed wire for three strokes and then whipped by Shana with the lighter and more merciful leather-thonged whip. So it made sense that her recovery was going to take a lot longer, with her body not only trying to heal the cuts in the scar tissue of her back, but also trying to grow scar tissue over scar tissue. It was hideous and barbaric and he couldn't imagine how she'd survived it, and yet she'd seemed to be doing fine until the altercation with Shana. When her back had hit the wall opposite Shana's room door, she'd grimaced in agony because some of the thin scar tissue that had just begun forming had split, and Doc had been trying to staunch the bleeding since. He didn't want to complicate things further by trying to put stitches in scar tissue, but at the same time it was almost impossible to keep her from moving long enough for that scar tissue to form. Now he could see splits along the edges of the tissue, places where thin scar tissue met regular skin along her back, and wondered if he shouldn't just put her in a medically-induced coma until the healing of her skin was well under way.

"Has she been moving much? Getting up, walking around?" he asked Charlie.

The big Navajo shook his head, forehead creased with worry. "She was at first. She'd get up and walk to the bathroom, sit up to eat. Curl up on her side to sleep. A couple days ago—" _after the confrontation,_ the words hung unspoken in the air but understood all the same, "She's had little strength to do anything."

"I have to go to the bathroom," Cam spoke, her voice barely above a whisper, and Charlie nodded quietly, then lifted her effortlessly into his arms, carrying her at a slow gliding walk into the bathroom, kicking the door closed behind him. When she was done, he carried her back out, she being apparently too weak to manage even that much, and sat back down with her on the bed as Doc finished the task of changing the dressing on her wounds. He was alarmed at how still she seemed, how little reaction she was showing even to pain as the tape on the edge of the gauze pads tugged at her skin. And from the look of intense concentration on George Huang's face, the psychologist was worried too.

"Cam," he started gently, coaxingly. "How are you feeling?"

It seemed to take Cam a long time to muster up enough strength to answer. "Okay. I guess. You…shouldn't have gotten mad at Alex…I promised her I would testify. And she said she would hold me to it."

"But she didn't have to do that now. You're still physically and mentally fragile."

"It's her job. She's supposed to do that."

"It's not her job to push you when you can't handle it."

Cam shrugged, a bare, almost imperceptible lift of her shoulders. "I never told her I couldn't."

"Can you?"

Another shrug, and a wince. "It doesn't matter."

George shook his head. "Yes. It does."

Cam closed her eyes, leaned her head against Charlie's shoulder. Only he felt the hot prick of her tears against his skin. "Charlie and Shana are the only two people in my life who really care about me, about who I am as opposed to what I can do for them. And now Shana hates me. It's just a matter of time before Charlie thinks I'm weak and not worth it and then what am I going to do? My mother abandoned me. Dad died. After Dad died no one really cared about me. Adam said I was frigid and not a complete woman and he hated the fact that his family was trying to shovel him off on me. Jennifer was sorry for me, that was why she nursed me and let me join the tribe. It wasn't until I met Clayton at Camp Mackall that I thought someone was finally interested in me, but then things kinda got out of hand and he brought me here only because I was injured and he didn't think the SERE trainers at Camp Mackall would take care of me. And then I got into all sorts of legal trouble first with the court martial and Broadview, and then…what happened with Walker…and then ICE and Miramar, and it was all just so much more trouble for everyone, and then all of this happened. And now Shana hates me." More tears, and shaking shoulders. "All I ever wanted was to just be normal. Live a normal life with normal friends, but everything—everything—has conspired against me to just take that away, over and over."

"But you volunteered for this deep-cover mission. Do you regret it?"

An immediate, firm 'no.' "No, I don't. It brought Shana back. I know she…she hates me…now, but there is nothing I can do about it. She belongs here, she has many, many more people who care about her, Snake Eyes, all her friends here, her family at home, the Army and the FBI…there are more people who would miss her than would miss me. And once…" her voice shook. "Once Alex is done with all those trials—I already promised her I'd testify—no one will ever be able to look at me like I'm normal again. So what does it matter if I'm ready for it or not? These trials…" she took a deep, shuddering breath. "These trials are going to kill me. So it doesn't matter."

"It does matter. You have a husband who is desperately in love with you and would do anything for you. Your friends here like, respect, and admire you for your courage, your determination, your dedication to doing the right thing. Not a single person here would have been able to go deep cover, endure what you did in order to find a friend." At this point George was convinced Shana was rather more than just a friend to Cam, but for now it would do. "Cam…Shana doesn't hate you."

"Yes she does. After what I did to her, she would have to."

"No. She doesn't. I can assure you of that. She only thinks she does, at the moment, but she doesn't. Right now she has been through something horribly traumatic, she's in pain, exhausted and confused, hurting and still recovering from the massive amount of drugs in her system. She doesn't hate you. She's confused and she's just projecting outward right now, clinging to what little control over her emotions she has left. Once she gets her emotions under control, her logic and reasoning will follow, and she'll understand then that you did what you felt you had to, what was best for everyone, and even if she continues to cling to some of her misunderstandings, her friends are quickly going to correct her on that. Allie herself said that you did the best you could to keep them all safe under those conditions—that you had every right to feel concerned about Shana possibly spilling the secret of the tracer. There was a point, early on, when you two had just gotten to the island, and she was drugged and interrogated. Shana told them that she lived at an army base at Fort Wadsworth. That's classified information she is not supposed to reveal. And then she switched to Gaelic, and according to Allie, Shana told them even more secrets about us; fortunately it made no sense to Kennedy or his cohorts because they didn't recognize the language, but Allie is fluent and she said that Shana told a lot of the secrets of this project. Cam, even General Abernathy himself said he was considering giving you a commendation for bravery."

Cam's eyes widened. "He is?" she sounded shocked.

"Yes. And once Shana's a little stronger we'll have a talk with her and straighten out her perceptions. When under barbital type drugs you have no idea what you said; she likely doesn't know just how much information she spilled and how valuable that was; once she's strong enough to handle it she'll realize how wrong she was to blame you for the decisions you made."

"Are you sure?" There was hope in Cam's eyes.

"I'm absolutely sure," George nodded firmly. "Now, I think this has been enough stress for you and I think you should get some sleep. If you don't mind, I think I'll talk to Doc about what kinds of medicines you're on now and whether some sort of mild anti-depressant would help, and we'll see if we can get you straightened out. And I'm going to have a word with Alex about not getting you upset. Now get some sleep." He and Doc left the room, and Charlie set about tucking her into bed.

The big Navajo was quiet as he got her comfortable, and it wasn't until she was comfortable in their bed with a plate of fresh fruit—sliced applies, grapes, some soft rolls spread with butter and jam—in easy reach—and he was stretched out on the folding cot beside the bed that he said quietly, "I love you, Kenastie Scannado, Deer-Who-Leads. I love you, Polaris, the Ranger Corporal. But most of all, I love you, Cameron Arlington. You are the bravest and most dedicated woman I have ever met in my life. My life would not be complete without you, and if I had never known you my life would be so much emptier now than it was before. I cannot now imagine a life without you by my side, and should your soul seek out the spirit world, mine, too, would soon take flight and follow you."

"I…Charlie…don't say that if it isn't true." She looked at the plate, picked up a slice of apple and bit into it, just to give herself something to do, so she wouldn't have to look up at him and maybe see that he was lying to her.

"But it is true. You are my life, now and forever. You have mine in exchange for yours, and so I demand that you take care of yourself so that you, in turn, can take care of mine."

She stared at him for a moment, then smiled, a real genuine smile around the grape in her teeth. "That is the silliest, most romantic thing I have ever heard anyone say." Her hand crept out across the covers, and his hand caught hers at the edge of their two beds. "I love you, Charlie Ironknife, and I swear by the Ancestors and the Goddess above that I'll take better care of this life that you value so much."

"And it's not just me, Cam. It's everyone around us too. You said that Shana and I are the only ones who care about you. Do you truly believe that?"

"Yes, I…I do." And he heard the ring of truth as she studied the plate, chose a slice of bread.

Charlie said firmly, "Cam, think about that. Think about everyone you know, everyone in your life. What about Uncle Art, and Mama Annie, and Jack? Do they not care about you? They never stopped thinking about you, and Jack—even when everyone else thought you'd just forgotten about them and moved on, he insisted to his parents that you still loved them, needed them, wanted them." He smiled. "And Mama Annie did send some really good cookies for Christmas."

His smile surprised a weak laugh from Cam. "They were good." The apple slices were gone now.

"And Jennifer. Despite the fact that she is your clan sponsor and medicine woman and teacher, she is also your friend. She does her best to try and help you, even when you don't want to be helped." His wry face brought another smile to Cam's thin face and sunken eyes. 'I'll admit, though, that we both did deserve that tongue lashing you gave us. And I did apologize."

"Yes you did." The last grape vanished.

Charlie sobered. "And the rest of the people here. Hawk's Girls. Shana, Allie, Courtney, Alex, Liv. They are your friends too, even if you can't see that now, can't understand that now. Clayton admires you, likes you as a person, not just for your skills. He didn't have to bring you here, you know, if he didn't see you as someone he would like to work with on a daily basis. In all the years he's been head of this project, I can count on one hand the number of people he personally brought in to work with us. And he's never brought someone injured. He tries to avoid letting sympathy color his judgment on who to bring, he tries to go against his initial instinct and give people a chance to prove him wrong."

Even softer, "That's why Walker ended up at this base. Clayton's first reaction to hearing what he'd done to you was to kick him as far from the project as possible but his CO was so sure he was a good soldier that Hawk went against his gut instinct and allowed him on base. With disastrous consequences. His anger over what happened to you was as much anger at himself as it was at Walker. He'd trusted where he shouldn't, given someone a chance against his instinct, and someone paid the price for it who should never have. You paid the price. And I expect it's going to be one of those regrets every commander carries around with them for the rest of their lives. He's going to remember that forever, and next time he'll be a little less quick to trust where it hasn't been earned…and a little less hesitant when it comes to trusting his instincts. He trusted his instincts when he stepped forward to be your training partner during the SERE course, and his instincts were fully repaid. He has never once regretted bringing you here, he has always considered you a valuable asset and," he smiled now, "No one on this base other than Flint, Duke, Shana, Allie, Doc, and Olivia have his personal number. But he gave it to you. Before you even came to live and work here, he gave it to you. Because he saw something in you that he liked."

Cam's eyes widened. "Seriously?"

"Yes. Cam, I know you spent most of your childhood alone, and learned that you couldn't depend on anyone but yourself, but you don't need to do that here. Not anymore. For the rest of your life, Cam, you will never be alone. There will always be someone with you who cares about you. Friends, family…me."

She smiled. "I love you Charlie." And she looked…happy. Peaceful.

He smiled. "All right. It is getting late, and we do want you to get some sleep, but before we turn in for the night, did you want anymore?"

"Anymore what?" she followed his pointing finger with her eyes, and blinked. The apple slices, grapes, and slices of buttered toast were all gone. "Did…I eat all that?"

His heart sang. She'd been so busy listening to him she hadn't even paid attention to what she ate. "Yes you did."

"But…I didn't leave any for you!" She looked aghast.

"It's okay. I didn't really want any. I don't have much of a sweet tooth…and I was allergic to those apples."

"Really?" she stared at him. "I never knew that."

"Really." He hoped she'd swallow the lie—if she felt guilty every time she ate something he'd never be able to get her to gain weight. Fruit and buttered toast were good starters; now if he could get sandwiches and soup into her….He'd have to try that the next day. He just wanted her to gain enough strength back so she didn't have to depend on him just to get out of bed, just to get to the bathroom and get through the day. Maybe getting a TV in here would help—if she had something to keep her mind occupied, maybe she'd eat more just to keep her hands busy? She was too weak to hold up a book…or maybe he could get Allie to buy Cam one of those electronic books? He knew she missed reading but she didn't have the strength to hold up a regular thick paper book. One of those skinny little electronic books would be easier.

He left the empty tray on the dresser and lay down on the folding cot. She'd been too weak to move much in the bed, and small movements seemed to hurt, but tonight she curled up on her side and stretched her thin hand and scarred arms across the bed to him, and he laced his fingers with hers, feeling the fragility in them. He would work with her on that, work with her until she was back to normal, and then he'd ask Doc what they could do about her lungs. He absolutely wasn't going to be the one to tell her she might never be able to dance again; she would miss it too much, it would kill her, and it would kill him.

They could do lung transplants, couldn't they? He'd gladly donate a lobe of his lung so she could breathe enough to still dance as she was born to, to celebrate her life in this one unique way she had.

They fell asleep still holding hands.


	14. Chapter 75: Dirty

**Chapter 75: Dirty**

Snake Eyes gave the door a token tap and stepped in.

He'd been hopeful that last night's incident with Shana choosing to eat out in the corridor with him meant she'd reached some sort of turning point, but when he got back from dropping off the empty trays in the mess hall he'd found her curled up in bed. He'd started to slide in next to her, only to have her whimper suddenly and try to inch away from him. These beds weren't designed for two fully-grown adults to sleep together unless they didn't mind being close, but as much as Snake Eyes ached to touch her, to hug her and hold her until she fell asleep, she scooted all the way out to the edge of the mattress until he was sure she would fall off the other side of the bed. And after a moment, knowing there was no way she was going to be able to get any sleep like that, he'd gotten out of bed and spent the night sitting in the chair by her desk. She'd relaxed once he was out of the bed, turned her back on him and gone to sleep, but it had been an uncomfortable sleep for both of them, with her waking several times screaming from nightmares and him kneeling by the bed, holding her hand and comforting her. The nightmares, he knew, were a sign that she was healing; her mind had gone from shutting everything out to starting to admit and deal with the things that had happened, and unfortunately nightmares were the way that one's mind dealt with traumatic events. So it was a hopeful sign, but painful to watch, and by morning Snake Eyes realized Charlie's wisdom in acquiring a folding Army cot to set up beside Cam's bed. Mostly because Cam's physical condition was too fragile for Charlie to climb in and out of it, but also because it meant Charlie didn't have to try and curl his big frame into a desk chair. Charlie was several inches taller than Snake Eyes and a desk chair would be impossible to sleep in.

He'd gotten up early this morning and brought two trays from the mess hall, but they'd eaten quietly, silently, in the confines of her room. She looked tired, so he hadn't pushed the issue, and she'd simply handed him her tray when it was empty and grabbed a set of clothes, disappearing into the bathroom.

He was slightly surprised to find that she wasn't out of the bathroom yet when he walked back in; he'd taken a quick detour when he saw Allie heading out of the mess and stopped to ask her if she could find a folding cot for him. She'd assured him she'd get right on it and he'd returned to the bedroom, reassured…only to find that Shana wasn't in it.

He paused as he closed her bedroom door, listening. She was in the bathroom, he realized after a moment; he could hear a soft, muffled sound, like sobbing, coming from the closed door. He didn't even think about what he was doing; he went to the door and turned the knob. She hadn't locked the door, whether unconsciously or if she'd just forgotten, he didn't know, and he pushed it open.

She was sitting in the bathtub, in about four inches of water. Not deep enough to drown in, but not nearly deep enough to submerge and soak like she usually enjoyed—they'd had a hot tub installed in the master bathroom in their Sierra Nevada cabin just because he knew how she enjoyed a hot soak, and even the occasional bubble bath (and so did he, though it was less for the bubbles and more for what they did while the bubbles were floating in it.) And she had a scrubbing rag in her hand, not the usual soft washcloth, but a scrubber that they usually used to clean sweat off each other after a strenuous workout.

_Should_ _she even be using that with her skin still tender?_ Was his first thought, and then all thought fled his mind when he realized the redness on her skin wasn't from heat, or tenderness—she was scrubbing, scrubbing her skin so hard that it was raw in a few places and close to bleeding. He forgot everything except her as he dropped to his knees beside the tub and stared at her, aghast, as she dropped the scrubbing bath sponge in the tub (he noted distantly that it was slightly pinkish) and shrank back in the tub as hot tears trickled down her cheeks. Her hands flew. _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just….I keep feeling his hands all over me, touching me over and over and over and I feel so dirty and ashamed and __**I want to stop feeling him touching me!**_

He understood, and his heart ached as he shoved the scrub sponge aside. The bathwater was already pinkish, and her skin was bright red, and she didn't need any more pain on top of that. Wordlessly, he soaped his own hands gently, then placed his hand on her shoulder and started to caress her skin with his hands.

Gentle. As if she were made of the thinnest porcelain, or eggshells, and he were afraid of breaking her. His hands applied soap to her shoulders, fingers trailing around each bruise and brushing over them with a feather-light touch. He looked at the shapes of the bruises, fought down anger at the thought of the heavy, masculine hands that had left them there, and brushed her skin gently, a feather-light touch with all of the love and care and compassion he could muster focused on his fingertips, willing her to feel the emotions as he gently caressed her, all over, trying with his love to erase the memory of Kennedy's hate. She gasped at the first touch, tried to shrink away, but he placed his other hand on the junction of her neck and shoulder and held her still, and after a moment he felt the tight muscles under his hand unknot, uncurl, he felt her relax under his hand, and he used both hands to caress her skin, to touch every inch of her; her shoulders, arms, back, then upward from her feet to her ankles and legs. By this time her eyes were closed and she was almost smiling in bliss, and she didn't react when he carefully touched her upper chest and started to wash her front.

Normally every chance to be in a steamy bathroom with her was an opportunity for foreplay; they usually grabbed every chance they got, and his body remembered that. His groin twitched, and he wanted her so keenly, was so hungry for her, that it was a strain not to lean over and kiss her, not to lean over and take one pert nipple in his mouth and work magic on her, the magic that took her from cool, collected, confident Master Sergeant O'Hara to fiery passionate sex kitten Shana. Her breasts and sex had healed from the bee stings, and the skin was now flawless and creamy, dotted with a few pale freckles, and Jesus, but it had been so long since they'd last made love that his pants were several sizes too small and he desperately wanted her. But she was still recovering, she'd been through something horribly traumatic, and he couldn't do that to her, and even as his soap-slippery hands traveled over her breasts, down her flat stomach and touched her upper thighs, it was suddenly too much for him and he quickly rinsed his hands in the bath and backed away—then, greatly daring, he leaned in for a quick kiss, planted gently, lovingly, on her damp forehead, before he fled the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Shana closed her eyes in bliss and relaxed into the bottom of the bathtub. Although she'd been tormented the last few days by the thought of Kennedy's hands on her, touching her all over, hurting her and bringing her pain, as soon as Snake Eyes touched her, thoughts of Kennedy vanished and all she could feel were the strong, familiar hands she loved so much, hands that could kill as quickly as they could bring her pleasure, hands as gentle as they were strong. They had never needed spoken words to communicate, and she felt his care, his concern, his love, in every stroke as his hands passed over her skin; first her back and arms and hands, then her feet, ankles, legs. She felt his momentary hesitation, and she lay back in the tub, eyes closed, and moments later felt his hands on her breasts.

The hot spike of desire shocked her even as it made her suddenly hungry. She'd never, ever thought she'd feel desire again, but Jesus, the sudden driving hunger in her loins for him deep inside her sex made her suddenly want to grab him, to hug him, to pull him in the bath with her and sink herself onto him. It shocked her that she could ever feel desire for a man again after what had happened, and she wondered for long moments if the sudden lust had anything to do with the remnants of the massive levels of Oxytocin in her system. She opened her mouth to gasp his name, to beg for him to get in the tub and touch her, God, she suddenly needed him so much, but even as she started to draw in a breath he abruptly dipped his hands in the tub, rinsed the soap from his hands, gave her a quick kiss, and left the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. She was left lying stunned in the bottom of the tub, staring at the ceiling as she tried to sort out what just happened.

He'd said, once, that he could tell from her body language when she wanted him. And she knew it was true. She could usually tell when he wanted her. But they must not have been reading each other right this time, because she'd felt desire in his hands, and he had to have seen the way she wanted him, but he'd left before she could speak to him.

_He knows you begged Kennedy for sex. He knows about you begging for Kennedy to let you come, that you begged that sadistic bastard for permission to come, that you lost control of your own body, and he might have started wanting you but as soon as he remembered that he took his hands off you. He can't stand the sight of you. Knowing that Kennedy—and every other filthy male on that god-awful trip had their dirty hands all over you and their cocks in you…you must look like a filthy whore in front of him. You know he rarely had girlfriends before you, he was almost practically a virgin, and now he can't even stand the sight of you._

_Stop it,_ Shana tried to tell the nasty voice inside her head—Christ, but it sounded like her snobbish older sister Siobhan—but oh God, why else would Snake Eyes have started to touch her, to arouse and stimulate her, and then stopped? He'd never done so before, and she curled on her side in the now-cold bathwater and started to cry, biting down on her knuckles in an attempt to keep him from hearing, her heart knotted up in misery. _He can't touch me anymore. Every time he touches me from now on he'll be seeing a whore. Oh God. Snake Eyes, I'm so sorry!_ But she could still feel his hands passing over her skin, and suddenly she never wanted to bathe again. To treasure for this one last time the feel of her lover's hands on her skin.

Snake Eyes barely let the bathroom door close behind him as he collapsed to his knees, hid hands fumbling under his waistband until he felt his length, hard and throbbing with need.

She was so beautiful. She hadn't taken the kind of damage Cam had, her skin was still perfect and flawless, and Jesus, but he wouldn't have even noticed scars anyway. His love for Shana O'Hara went deeper than the skin, all the way down to their soul, and even if she'd been hopelessly scarred as Cam had, even if he'd known he could never have sex with her again, as Charlie had thought when he first met Cam, he would still always love her. She was the only woman he would ever love, the only woman for him, but she was fragile, still healing, and he would hurt her if he took advantage of her just to ease his lust. Thinking about the smooth, creamy skin made him get harder, and with a stifled groan his hand started to move in the boxers until the pressure released, and he bit his lip to stifle his shout as he came all over his hand, inside his pants.

It took long moments for him to get his breathing under control enough to stagger to his feet, take off his soiled pants and boxers, wipe himself clean, and change. It was poor substitute for having Shana with him, for having Shana near him, touching him, for seeing Shana on top of him crying his name in ecstasy and satisfaction as she rode him hard, but it would have to do for now.

There was a tap on the room door, and he opened it—to see Duke standing there with Allie, each one of them holding one end of a folding cot. Shana had a single room, smaller than Cam and Charlie's double room and larger bed, but by dint of shoving the desk close to the wall and wedging the chair in the far corner, the three of them managed to get the cot set up without obscuring the path to the door, or the bathroom. Only as they finished setting the cot up did they all see Shana standing in the bathroom door, fully dressed, hair wet, expression indecipherable.

"Um." Duke broke the uncomfortable silence. "There's, uh, not really enough room in here for two beds but I thought we'd give it a try. Um, Shana…I'm sorry, we just sorta wanted to get this set up so you and Snake Eyes could…um…well, so Snake Eyes could still be with you but so you wouldn't feel…too uncomfortable. If you don't like it, we can take it out," and he Allie, and Snake Eyes waited to see what she would say.

Shan didn't say anything, just gave a quick nod of her head, and they took it as a sign that she was okay with it. Relief spread across Duke's face and he grinned. "All right. Um. Feel better then." And he and Allie disappeared.

Snake Eyes set about making the bed. Shana wordlessly handed him a pillow from her own bed, then a blanket, and as he arranged everything so he could be comfortable but still be in easy reach if she needed anything, Shana spied a long, thin package in the corner and went to investigate.

It was her name on the outside, but the address was Fort Hamilton. It was customary, when the Joes bought something that couldn't be delivered to a post office box, to have it delivered to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn; the two bases were so close that delivering packages wasn't much of a chore for those personnel who knew about the classified Fort Wadsworth base and were trusted to carry messages. And at the moment, rather less; Mainframe was currently involved with a cute young Specialist out of Fort Hamilton, so her having to deliver packages was an excuse to see him. It was an arrangement that satisfied everyone.

She reached for the end and started to rip the paper from the outside of the package. As the sword came free of the packaging the delight on her face became obvious; the happiness in her smile tore at Snake Eyes' heart.

Allie, Duke, and Snake Eyes himself had been making steady progress toward replacing all the swords Snake Eyes had broken; almost all of the empty spots on the dojo walls had been filled. However, some really had been irreplaceable; there had been a few truly unique pieces and Snake Eyes felt worse than ever knowing that here he'd gone and taken yet another thing she'd liked from her.

But then he'd seen this one from an online retailer, a deceptively plain, simple full-tang sword with a wooden hilt, ice-tempered steel for a blade, heavy pure brass tsuba and brass trimming along the plain wooden saya. It wasn't flashy or glitzy, it was functional instead of decorative, but the feature of this had been the wood. Made with some sort of exotic golden-brown wood that had countless knots and burls, the hilt and saya had been sanded mostly smooth, but the knots left subtle rises and dips in the surface of the hilt and sheath. On the sheath it produced an interesting texture; on the hilt it produced a very subtle way to firmly grip the sword; it was only when you inspected it very carefully that you realized some of the burls were sanded down flat and some raised so that the hollows in the wood made a natural grip.

Her eye made contact with his across the room, and warmth flooded him, happiness, as he saw the obvious delight in her eyes. It was not only functional, but it was beautiful and unique and he would be just as pleased to have it in the dojo as Shana herself was. The perfect mix of flash and function. _I thought you'd like it,_ he signed to her as she sheathed the sword again. _I saw it and I immediately knew you'd like it. I had to get it for you._

_Did you even know I was coming back?_ She signed back.

He didn't even have to think about it. _Yes. Yes, I knew you were coming back. I always knew. You would never leave me voluntarily, as I would never leave you. And…Cam promised me she would bring you back to me. Whatever the cost to her personally._ He saw the cloud cross Shana's face, and he sighed. He understood what George Huang was saying about Shana not being ready to confront that issue quite yet, but Snake Eyes himself was absolutely convinced that the two women wouldn't be able to really begin healing until they fixed whatever was wrong between them. If Huang didn't say something soon Snake Eyes was going to bite the bullet and tell Shana himself. Shana being angry at Cam was going to do neither of them any good at all.

_Is this my Christmas present?_ Was her next sign, a tacit refusal to discuss the topic of Cam. Snake Eyes allowed himself to be drawn away from that train of thought, but was determined to revisit it later.

_No, actually that was a…_he paused, unwilling to tell her he'd wrecked the dojo in a fit of anger, and finally just shrugged. _It was a whatever present. But Christmas presents are in the Rec Room if you want to take a walk with me._

_The Rec Room? Christmas?_

He tried to explain. _We couldn't have Christmas without you, Everyone said it felt like something was missing. We put it off until you came back, because we always knew you'd be back. We had faith._

_But it's…it's the beginning of March. You guys held up Christmas until March?_

He shrugged. _We couldn't have Christmas without you. Do you want to open them now?_

_Yeah, it's…wow, I can't believe you all would have done that for me_… She still looked nonplussed as he opened her room door and held out a hand toward it. _Rec Room?_

She hesitated a long moment. She'd been in here for so long that leaving was suddenly somewhat uncomfortable, but after all, Christmas waited on the Rec level…

She took a deep breath and stepped out.


	15. Chapter 76: Christmas

**Chapter 76: Christmas**

They ran into Allie and Duke not that much further along the hallway. Allie's eyes lit up when Snake eyes signed an explanation. _We're heading to the Rec room. Shana wants to open her Christmas presents._

"Christmas!" Allie's eyes lit up. "I'll let everyone know!" and as she ran off, Snake Eyes had a feeling that 'everyone' was indeed going to know by the time they got to the Rec room.

Duke paused slightly awkwardly in the hallway next to Snake Eyes and Shana. "I'm really, really glad to see you up," he said quietly to Shana. "Base just hasn't been the same without you. Nothing's been the same without you, anywhere. And I know I'm not the only one who feels that way."

Shana reached out and gripped his shoulder, a silent gesture of acknowledgement. _Thank you,_ she signed, and watched him head off further down the hall.

Snake Eyes stepped close to her, not invading her personal space, but a subtle, pointed reminder that he'd missed her too, that Duke didn't have the monopoly on having missed her. She knew what he was trying to say without him saying it (a good sign, that she was starting to read his body language again) and signed quickly, _I'm sorry, Snake Eyes, I just_—

He captured her hands in his, holding them firmly until she stilled them, then his own hands flashed. _Shana, stop saying 'I'm sorry'. You've been saying 'I'm sorry' for the last couple of weeks since you got back. You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for. This was no one's fault._

All her self-doubt and fear and loathing came boiling to the surface. _You don't understand. Yes, it is. I've trained my whole life for this, everything I've worked for and wanted, for this job, for this career, for the Army. And…look at how I betrayed myself, my unit, my country—I betrayed you._ Her hands faltered. _I'm just…so sorry._

_You haven't betrayed me. What would make you say that?_ He looked at her intently, trying to figure out why she would be thinking that way.

Her hands moved slowly, as if each word were being dragged out of her, as tears spilled down her cheeks. _I…I let all those men touch me. I let them in me, let them…do things…to me, and I didn't stop them, and now…now I'm dirty. I'm a whore, I let them in me, I…I…enjoyed… she couldn't go on._

She didn't have to. Snake Eyes understood what she meant, from listening to Ettienne and Alex, listening to Clayton and Olivia. _Shana, just because your body responded to them does not, in any way, shape or form, mean that you actually wanted it. It was a physical response, nothing more. It didn't involve your heart, your soul, your mind. If you think I'm going to look at a plain physical reaction as you 'wanting it', then, baby, I'm taking you to the infirmary to have Doc check you out for more of those drugs because clearly you're not thinking straight._

She tried to smile through her tears. _Baby?_

_Yes._ And then his hands moved faster, almost too fast for her to keep up with as his own guilt and anguish and self-loathing poured out. _Baby, I'm so sorry I didn't do more to save you back there in the Congo. I'm sorry I made the decision to cut the bridge ropes. I'm sorry I didn't hold onto you when we were hanging on from that bridge._

_It's okay_—she started but he was rushing on.

_It's not okay. Because of those choices I made, those decisions, you went through something unimaginable and horrific that you should never have had to go through. No one should. We saw Sandra's body in the Congo, we had several ports closed to try and stop the cargo vessel you were on, but it slipped through the nets, slipped through our grasp. I didn't want to leave, I truly didn't, but Cam told me that there was no point in my staying because you weren't there anymore and my focus should be on getting to where you'd end up, not on where you'd been._

Her face clouded at the mention of Cam's name, and Snake Eyes evaluated that quickly before deciding to back off. Cam was still a sore topic for Shana, and while he might not agree—he knew what Cam had done, he'd felt Cam bring Shana relief as the redhead was drugged , through the impossible bond he had with her, this thing that Charlie called dreamwalking. He knew, he just didn't know how to explain that to her. He didn't even know how to explain that to himself; it sounded like something out of a fairy tale, or a science fiction novel, not something that belonged here in their utterly normal, prosaic world of drills, missions, and knowing they might not come back from the next one. So he steered clear of the topic, choosing instead to focus on telling her all the things that he'd thought, felt, anguished over during the weeks here at base without Shana by his side, the time he'd spent curled up in her room, trying to stay close to her in the only way he knew how.

_I'm sorry for all the things I ever said that hurt you. I'm so, so sorry for all the times when you wanted to go somewhere, share some pleasure with me, but ended up not going because I was selfish and concerned for what other people would think, instead of making you happy. That rock concert you wanted to go to—it wasn't until you were gone that I realized how much that would have hurt you, that you wanted to go but your loyalty to me meant that if I wouldn't go, then you wouldn't either. And the movie we both wanted to see…baby, I wonder now why you didn't just hit me over the head and take me with you, because I was being stupid. It's a darkened movie theater, no one's going to see me, and who cares anyway? Your happiness should have been the most important thing for me, and it wasn't, I let my selfishness hobble you, keep you from doing the things you wanted to do, and I swear Shana, with everything that is in me, that from now on I'll never stand in the way of something you want to do._ He didn't realize there were tears streaming down his face until she reached up tentatively to wipe them away, her hand coming up to caress his face, her thumb gently wiping the wet tracks.

The feel of her hand against his skin was like an electric shock. His entire being, heart, soul, and body thrilled to the touch, focused on that one gentle contact. The skin on his face felt like it was tingling under her hand, and he stared into those beautiful deep green eyes he loved so much and had longed so desperately for while she was away, and even as she started to drop her hand, he caught it, pressed it to the side of his face, tried to keep her there a tiny bit longer, and that reminded him of something else he wanted to say, something else he'd wanted to do, reminded him of a small velvet covered box wrapped in brightly-colored paper under the Christmas tree in the Rec room.

That box, and its contents, would wait until they got there, but right now what he wanted to say to her came first. _I love you, Shana O'Hara, and nothing in the world is going to change my mind. I could no more stop loving you that I could cut out my own heart. You are the only one for me, now and forever, and I'm sorry it took me this long to figure that out. I think I knew the first time I took you to our cabin in the mountains, I knew that when we started making plans for the renovation, for fixing it up and I knew that as we both started making those renovations and we both chipped in ideas to truly make it a home for both of us. I knew it after the helicopter accident when you stayed with me throughout the incident, from the accident itself through the recovery process and the surgeries that followed, and I knew you felt guilty and I told you that you didn't have to be. Now I'm telling you the same thing; don't feel guilty. There's no reason to be. What happened, happened; the important thing is not what happened, or how, but where we go from here._

A slow, genuine smile spread over Shana's face, and his heart ached with love for her again. _So…it doesn't bother you that…that so many other men touched me? It doesn't bother you that another woman touched me?_

He had to smile at that. _No. It doesn't. Shana, no red-blooded male is going to protest seeing two girls together. Especially when it's two beautiful girls. Most especially when one of those beautiful girls is his. I didn't have any problems with you and Court and Alex wrapped around each other in Medellin, remember?_

Shana blushed; she remembered his response when she'd tentatively apologized for making a scene. He on the other hand had told her that he'd found the whole scene deeply erotic and he'd wanted to take her right there. _I'm not beautiful. And neither is…is she. She says so._ Well, she might not have said Cam's name but she was thinking of her friend. It was an encouraging sign.

_You are the most beautiful woman in the world to me. And she is to Charlie—he worships the ground she walks on. He's willing to give up his status as a medicine man of his tribe to become simply the husband of a medicine woman of hers._ He felt a smile stretch his lips. _He was smart enough to understand that as soon as he met her. I was an idiot for not realizing what I had sooner. _His hands cupped her chin, tilting her head up to look at him. _I'm so very sorry, Shana. Forgive me?_

She nodded, her own eyes filming with tears. _There's nothing to forgive._ And then she stepped close and put her arms around him.

He gently brought his arms up to wrap around her. Dear God, it felt so good to just hold her, to have her warm and alive in his arms after so long of missing her, to have his arms full when they had been so empty before. He wanted to sweep her off her feet, carry her back to their quarters, and make love to her until she forgot all about Kennedy in her passion for him, but as much as he ached for her, for the sweet heat of her body, he was sure she couldn't possibly be ready for anything of the sort, and he silently ordered himself to stand down, forced himself to think of something, anything, other than how much he wanted to take her right there.

Shana felt the gentle nudge of something hard and insistent a little south of Snake Eyes' belt, and closed her eyes. For just a moment, thoughts of Kennedy, of the men on the cargo vessel from the Congo, and Hans Keil flashed through her mind, but a moment later was washed away by the flood of sexual heat from between her legs. She almost melted against him, had to lock her knees as she fought to stay upright. _I want him. I want him so bad, I could almost take him right here…_and while she was sure that it had to be a result of the leftover Oxytocin still coursing through her system, she couldn't deny that the throbbing she was feeling from between her legs had little to do with pain and everything to do with desperately wanting pleasure_. I can't want it, that soon_…but she couldn't deny her own need, and she wanted to beg him to take her back to her room—their room—when she felt the muscles in his body shift and he stood upright, holding her out at arm's length, then signed to her.

_Christmas waits in the rec room. Are you ready?_

She had to swallow her disappointment. _I guess he's not ready. Or he thinks I'm not ready. I know this is probably the Oxytocin talking, but I want him to stop being such a gentleman and just take me. I know he wants it, but maybe he thinks I'm not ready. _A slow smile curled her lips. _Okay, maybe I have to show him I'm ready. Seduce him. _Her grin got wider. _Oh, baby, get ready to be seduced._ Gone were her fears that he no longer found her desirable; now she understood his earlier hesitation in the bathroom. But she was feeling euphoric, wildly happy now, secure in knowing he loved her and she wouldn't lose him. The sight of him standing there crying for her had touched something deep inside, a hard knot of worry and anxiety she'd formed around her heart, her feelings, had loosened and relaxed at the sight of those tears.

So. She'd just have to seduce him all over again. She smiled happily at him and linked her arm with his, and as they strolled off toward the Rec room, she started planning her seduction.

Apparently their pause in the hall had been just long enough for Allie to run around and tell everyone that Shana was up and ready to open Christmas presents, because it looked like half the base was there when they got there (at least the half of the base that wasn't on duty.) Clayton, however, was missing—as was Cam and Charlie.

The usual procedure was for one person to sit by the tree, pull out packages one by one, and call out the name of the person to whom the package was addressed. Usually that was Shana; some people, overeager to get to the gifts, had rushed in before their names were called and the scuffle had ruined a couple of the gifts. The first time Shana did it she threatened to drop-kick anyone who jumped into the pile; under that threat she ensured an orderly and peaceful present presentation and after that the job had by unspoken agreement been handed to her.

But mindful of the fact that Shana wasn't speaking right now, Allie was sitting by the tree this time when Snake Eyes and Shana came in. She beckoned them both over, however, and duke grabbed a chair and planted it right next to Allie, at which Shana smiled widely at him and plunked herself down in the chair, with Snake Eyes standing behind the chair, a watchful, silent shadow. She saw a couple of gifts with the wrapping paper she used under the tree—good, then Snake Eyes would have raided her closet and taken out the gifts. The only thing she didn't see were the gifts wrapped in pastel blue paper for Liv and the baby; she supposed those were still in her closet and she'd have to take them out herself.

And it was, in all respects, just like a normal Christmas; packages out and being handed around, lots of laughing and talking and surprised exclamations as gifts came to light that the recipient wanted; Shana saw Courtney pull Wayne into the corner and give him a quick but passionate French kiss when she saw the new Swiss Army knife he'd bought her…on Shana's recommendation. Wayne locked gazes with Shana across the room, his eyes saying 'thank you' before Courtney's lips claimed his. Shana had to fight to suppress a smile.

"Shana?" Allie's voice broke into her thoughts, and she returned her attention to the gift-giving process, just in time to see the tiny, neat, newspaper-wrapped box in Allie's hand. She reached out to take it, wondering; only Snake Eyes wrapped his gifts in newspaper that neatly. Duke used newspaper too, but he was terrible at it; every time he wrapped something it looked like he'd had a mortal struggle with the paper and there was more tape on the package than on the roll when finished; it had always amused Shana that he, normally neat and ordered, had such a hard time wrapping things.

She barely had time to process that the package had to be from Snake Eyes before the ninja Master snatched the box out of Allie's hand and ripped the paper off. Allie didn't even have time to say anything as he stepped around Shana's chair, knelt in front of her, and opened the box.

The universe stopped.

He'd learned long ago that Shana didn't like diamonds. She loved deep jeweltoned colors, bold, bright tones, and so, when he'd picked this out two weeks before they'd all left on the Congo trip, he'd chosen a setting of colored Black Hills gold, a plain band with tiny channel-set emeralds that matched her deep green eyes. With his hands full of jewelry box, he couldn't sign The Question to her, but he didn't need to; it was there in his eyes when she looked at him.

Everyone was silent.

And in the silence Shana finally heard the television in the corner of the Rec room.

Mindful of the fact that she and Cam were still recovering, the guys in the Rec room had quickly switched the TV to a random channel from the news they'd been watching on Federal Prosecutor Abbie Carmichael's interview with the media. They'd turned it to what was supposed to be a completely harmless nature channel, a documentary about the life cycle of bees.

The next moment they realized how wrong they'd been.

Shana sprang from her chair, flinging herself across the room, eyes wide with terror, not even seeing the other people around her. A high, keening whimper of terror came from her throat, unaccompanied by words but frantic with fear, and Snake eyes dropped the ring in its velvet box to catch her just before her head hit the wall, putting his back to it as he wrapped his arms tightly around her. He lifted his hand to sign turn it off but Allie had reacted first, racing for the remote and hitting the off button as the rest of the Joes stared in silent befuddlement and then dawning horror and anger as Allie explained what happened. "She was deliberately stung by bees while captive on the island. Hearing the bees on TV set her off again."

Snake Eyes was curled around her, his hand gently stroking her hair until she stopped whimpering; then, with a quiet look and a silent nod, he swept her up in his arms, leaving the Joes…and the carnage of Christmas, behind.

It was Allie and Conrad who finally snapped out of their numb daze enough to start gathering up scattered bits of paper and the remains of a Christmas that no one felt like celebrating anymore. Seeing Shana up and about had led most of them to think that she hadn't been wounded that badly, but when they'd seen her reaction in the Rec room, it had hit home that she wasn't the same, and it would take a long time before she was 'normal' again.

Allie carefully separated the little velvet box from the drifts of paper and closed it, then paused, uncertain what to do with it. It was Duke who held out a hand. "I'll give it to Snake Eyes later and he'll find the right time to give it to her," he said, and she let it drop into his hand, then, blinded by tears, she gathered up the rest of the trash, festive mood gone.


	16. Chapter 77: Speak

**Chapter 77: Speak**

She didn't say a word to him as he carried her (she was much, much lighter than she'd been before, and that worried him even while he felt reassured by her apparent willingness to let him hold her and help her) back to her quarters. Once there, he laid her down on her bed, lay down next to her, and continued to hold her. She wasn't crying anymore, though an occasional shudder would wrack her body.

He held her silently until the last of those subsided and then got up, carefully, trying not to wake her. He just wanted to change out of his clothes and then stretch out on the Army cot beside her bed, but even as he started to move her eyes opened sleepily and she looked at him, just looked at him, with a smile on her face and pleading in her eyes.

_Stay with me._

And he was only too happy to.

She hadn't forgotten where on the bed she needed to lie in order to be most comfortable. He hadn't forgotten where he needed to lie to stretch out or to curl protectively around her. And neither one had forgotten how much pleasure it was to simply lie next to each other, unspeaking, because words weren't necessary between the two of them.

And they slept.

Shana woke slowly.

Not the terrified, hyper-alert, wake-quickly-to-see-what-is-going-on-around-me awakening that she'd been experiencing. This was knowing immediately that she was safe and secure before she even opened her eyes—and she knew that because of the snoring beside her.

She opened her eyes and studied the man lying beside her. He'd changed during this whole fiasco, too; there were lines of worry on his face that hadn't been there before they'd left for the Congo, exhaustion and sleeplessness.

And the ring.

She flushed at the memory of her panic. Such a silly, stupid thing to panic about. A documentary about bees. If she'd been thinking straight, she'd have realized they were in a base underground and there was no way a bee would have gotten in—much less down through several levels. And oh, the ring!

Emeralds—the same color as her eyes. And gold. She wondered if he had it—wondered where it was. He'd have it, somewhere. She wanted it. On the way to the rec room the night before, he'd said he didn't know what he had until he'd lost it, lost her…and that he was sorry. And he'd mentioned Cam and Charlie getting married. The clues had been there, she just hadn't put the pieces together.

_I want to get married to him._ The sudden realization felt right even as it stunned her that she'd never thought about it before. We've been in a committed relationship for ten years now. That's a long time to be boyfriend and girlfriend. I thought about it before, but it just wasn't the right time—we're both wrapped up in our careers, and it didn't really seem like it was really important at the time; we were young and figured we had plenty of time.

She sighed inwardly. It wasn't that they were really much older than they had been before they left for the Congo at Christmas, but she'd now come face to face with her own mortality. There had been times when she'd seriously thought she was not coming home, that she would never see him again. And that thought had hurt so much she'd tried to block it out, tried not to think about it, but here she was, against all odds, back home. It was a miracle that they'd found her and she'd been able to come home.

And it had been due to Cam. As much as Shana was upset with her right now, she simply couldn't avoid that fact that Cam had come to find her, had succeeded, and it was due to the tracker implanted in her head that they'd been found at all. Shana vaguely remembered Cam coming up with a cover story, telling Shana to say they'd grown up in New York. And she remembered frantically trying to save Cam's life when a dose of barbital had sent the younger woman into anaphylactic shock.

And then it hit her all at once, and she sat straight up in bed. Cam didn't know Shana had had counter-narco-interrogation training. She didn't know Shana had learned techniques to beat drug-assisted interrogation; and if she didn't know that, she would have assumed that Shana wouldn't be able to control what she said in a drugged fit. It made sense, then, that she would have thought Shana couldn't be trusted with the info about the tracker.

And as for the rape, well…Cam was a former slave, and obedience would have been a habit deeply ingrained into her as a survival tactic when she was fifteen. To disobey meant pain. Maybe she would have been afraid to disobey an order to rape Shana.

A gentle touch on her arm, and she turned to smile reassuringly at Snake Eyes. He'd woken up, no doubt, when she sat up so abruptly, and there was a question in his eyes. She smiled at him, and he relaxed visibly.

She climbed out of bed, padded over to her dresser and got a change of clothes, then headed for the bathroom—deliberately leaving the bathroom door open behind her as she turned the water on, then stripped slowly. Although usually when she did that it was an open invitation for him to join her, this time after a moment the bathroom door closed gently and she stared at it in consternation. _He picks now to go all chivalrous on me. _She shook her head at the obtuseness of the male of the human species and slipped into the shower.

The warm water felt wonderful against her skin, and she didn't feel the need to scrub again; she could still feel Snake Eyes' hands on her the day before, washing her body, his touch erasing the memory of Kennedy's hands on her. She treasured that as she washed briskly, a normal shower (although she avoided the peach-scented shampoo and grabbed Snake Eyes' shampoo instead).

Clean and refreshed, she left the bathroom fully dressed, finding Snake Eyes dressed and waiting for her. _I wanted to take you to see Doc. He was talking about taking the dressings off your wrists the last time I talked to him, and I thought maybe if you're up to it we could take a walk to see him instead of having him come to see us._

She nodded happily; any reason to take a stroll with him, spend time with him. They left her room, lazed down the corridor, Shana smiling and nodding at the smiles on everyone's faces as they passed them in the hall. _It's good to be home,_ she thought as they rounded the corner and into the medlabs.

The first thing she heard was a determined baby howling, an earsplitting racket that must be driving Doc absolutely crazy. The first thing she saw was a baby she quickly deduced to be Auggie, lying in his bassinet kicking his fists determinedly and screaming.

She reached down to pick him up, and a smile spread across her face as she looked at his red-faced howling temper tantrum. He was so adorable, cute in his anger; very unlike his father in that regard. No one could call Clayton 'cute' when he was angry. Auggie could, although Shana had a feeling that would change as he got older—that determined jut to his chin was all Clayton's and she was sure, after hearing him, that he was going to have a temper to match that chin.

"Sorry, sweetie, Mommy's not able to come right now," she said aloud as she scooped him out of the bassinet, smiling as a strand of her long red hair, drying now after her shower, tickled his soft cheek and made him laugh. "Apparently, though, I make a good substitute. Are you hungry?"

Auggie blinked at her.

She grinned at him. "Of course you are. Never, ever met a growing boy who wasn't hungry; Dad and Mom used to swear that my brothers would eat them out of house and home. I guess I sort of did, too, only Siobhan—she's my older sister—would make sniping comments about my weight if she thought I was eating too much. Trust me, Auggie, you're better off as an only child."

Auggie expressed his distrust of that statement with a burp.

"Oh, no, really. Well, I guess that depends on the sibling, too. I'm fine with my brothers but my sister and I don't get along. We never have. Mom says I don't try hard enough, but…I can't get her to understand that no matter how hard I try Siobhan and I are never going to get along. At least now I'm going to marry Snake Eyes so we have a reason to avoid going home on furlough or holidays."

She grinned now as she turned and held Auggie up to see Snake Eyes. "Here. Say hi to Snake Eyes." Snake Eyes was standing openmouthed, thunderstruck—not too surprised not to have whipped out his camera and taken a picture of her holding the baby, she noticed with amusement—but he was plainly nonplussed. She grinned at him as Doc came out of his office to see what was going on…and why Auggie had stopped crying so abruptly.

He gurgled in the back of his throat, and she chuckled as she held him upright, draped a towel over one shoulder and propped him against it. Snake Eyes and Doc quietly withdrew to Doc's office, with Doc still looking behind him apprehensively either waiting for Shana to fall apart of for Auggie to start screaming again. When neither event happened, he quickly pulled Snake Eyes into his office and closed the door.

"Hot damn." Doc sighed as he sat down behind his desk. "Auggie's never taken that quickly to anyone before. And Shana looks fantastic. Practically healed. How is she doing psychologically? I heard about her panic attack yesterday but I hadn't had a chance to talk to you about it yet."

_She woke up this morning like nothing happened. Took a shower and we headed out here. Doc…she's talking. She hasn't said a word since she came back._

"She's getting better. Feeling better. I'm glad she's regaining some sense of normalcy and self-identity. The panic attacks will decrease gradually, and she can see a counselor about them if she wants to. We were visited a couple of days back by George Huang, Alex's friend in the FBI, and he's offered counseling to both women if they want it—" he stopped as they both heard Courtney's voice outside in the infirmary.

"Holy shit, I've never heard him so quiet!" The voice would have been unmistakable even without the profanity.

"Watch your mouth, Corporal, there's a child in the room!" Doc's shoulders shook with suppressed merriment as they heard Shana's sharp rebuke. "If he hasn't been quiet for you then obviously you've been doing something wrong."

"Hey, no argument there. Alex and I both decided neither one of us has any motherly instincts whatsoever. And he doesn't like us."

"Don't be silly, he's not old enough to decide who he does and doesn't like."

Courtney made an emphatic noise. "Speak for yourself. He's definitely decided that he doesn't like me. I'm absolutely positive." By now both Doc and Snake Eyes were standing in the doorway to the infirmary, and even Snake Eyes had to agree with Courtney's assessment; Auggie seemed perfectly happy to stay in Shana's arms, and was in fact eyeing Courtney with distrust. Or was he looking at the item in Courtney's hand? It looked like a carseat, but it was on an odd contraption of metal springs and gears and it had an electrical cord hanging off it. And Courtney holding something she made that required electric meant everyone had to watch out.

Shana knew it. "What is that, Courtney?"

Courtney put it on the floor; there were wheels somewhere under it, and it rolled smoothly. The carseat was also recognizable. The rest…well, the last time Courtney had made something that looked like it the Jeep it had been installed in needed to have a new engine put in afterward.

"I made it to keep him entertained. Look. He likes rocking and he likes being bounced but we can't do that nonstop, right? So I made this. Here put him down in it and buckle him in."

Shana eyes Courtney with suspicion. "If this hurts him…"

"It's not going to hurt him! For pity's sake, Shana, you're not his mother!" Courtney plucked Auggie from Shana's arms and started buckling him in even as his shrieks of outrage from being parted from this new babysitter he'd decided he very much liked, started. Shana stepped forward, about to get Auggie out, when Courtney quickly hit the power button on the…contraption.

The seat started to vibrate a little. Auggie stopped crying, puzzling out how to process this new sensation. The vibration turned into a slightly stronger up and down movement, just like a bouncer or a baby jumper.

Auggie giggled.

As the up and down bouncing changed to a rocking motion, he chortled. This went on for a while, with everyone watching in fascination…until Auggie decided he'd had enough and he wanted to go to sleep. His howls of outrage nearly deafened them all.

Shana sprang forward, her hands flying on the carseat straps and plucking him out of the nest. "There, now, it's okay, I'm right here," she said, cuddling him a little. To Courtney, she said, "He did like it. He just doesn't like it for long periods of time. Leave that here so whoever's babysitting him at the time can use it, okay?"

"Absolutely," Courtney was quick to agree. "Um. Since you're up now and you're talking, um… you wouldn't happen to want to take over the babysitting duties, would you?" She sounded hopeful. "As you pointed out, he's better off with you than me."

Scarlett put on her best drill sergeant tone. "Corporal Krieger. Is this your way of telling me you are unfit for this particular duty and wish to be excused?"

Courtney snapped a crisp salute. "Ma'am, yes, Ma'am!"

Shana grinned down at Auggie, who was curling up in her arms and preparing to go back to sleep. "I take it you concur, Private?"

He opened one eye and burped in reply.

Shana laughed. "All right. I'm not excusing you because you want to, but because he wants to. And his opinion is what matters." She grinned as she swung toward Doc and Snake Eyes…and stopped.

The next moment, Auggie dozing off in her arms, she was pushing past both men in the doorway to Doc's office and stepping in. Only then did Snake Eyes realize Doc had his TV on, and it was showing a news segment on the noon news about Kennedy. The picture on the screen was of the man himself, in an orange federal prison jumpsuit and shackles, being walked out the front door of the courthouse to the accompaniment of a firestorm of photographers' cameras and flashbulbs going off all around him.

"He's in custody?" her voice cracked slightly on the last word.

"Yes," Doc said quietly but cautiously. "The FBI went with the team of naval assault troopers and our own personnel. He was arrested and placed in federal custody along with his accomplices on the island."

"Rosa Capelletti? And Hans Keil?"

"They are also in custody. We pulled twelve people plus Damien Kennedy off the island. There were native Fijians there too, but from what we could determine they weren't involved directly with you and Cam being imprisoned and tortured so the decision was made to send them to the mainland and place the island under lockdown as a crime scene. An FBI team has remained on the island taking evidence, and the USS Columbia remains anchored near the island to provide security and interdiction efforts as well as to conduct training."

"I…I didn't want to speak. I didn't…" tears welled up, and Snake Eyes stepped quickly forward to take Auggie as Shana's arms trembled. "I spent a lot of time on the island drugged and dreaming…I dreamed of being back here. When I first got home…I thought it was all just my imagination, that any minute now I was going to wake up…back there…and it would all just be a dream, and that was why I didn't want to talk, afraid that I'd say something to betray us and who we were, but it isn't, I really am home and you really are here and he can never, ever get at me again…" she dissolved into tears and Snake Eyes quickly passed Auggie to Doc so he could take Shana in his own arms.


	17. Chapter 78: Seduction

**Chapter 78: Seduction**

The emotional storm of the morning left Shana feeling exhausted, and after Doc took the bandages off her wrists and pronounced them healed enough for her not to need them, she headed back to her quarters for a nap.

When she woke she was alone, Snake Eyes apparently having gone off somewhere on his own. She stretched luxuriously in the bed, treasuring the simple pleasure of being able to move freely, and as she sat up in bed her eyes fell on the sword she'd left leaning against the corner between her desk and the wall.

_Must get this army cot out of here. Snake Eyes is not going to be sleeping on that thing. I have a perfectly good bed large enough for both of us as long as we don't mind being close. And I certainly don't mind being close to him. Mmm._

She lay down in the bed, tucked the covers under her chin, and let her hands travel downward, exploring. There had been times during her captivity when she'd wondered if she would sustain any permanent damage, but her questioning fingers found no pain there, no deformation, no scarring. Unless the scarring was inside. She winced at the thought. Having held Auggie that morning, she'd known, suddenly, fresh on the heels of Snake Eyes' engagement the previous day, that she wanted to have children with him, wanted a little boy with his blond hair and blue eyes, and she was afraid Doc would tell her that, like Alex, she wasn't going to be able to have a baby—or it would be complicated, like Liv's.

After what she'd experienced on the island, she'd thought she'd never feel desire anymore, that she'd never, ever want to have sex again, but now suddenly she realized that it wasn't the island, and Kennedy, that she was thinking about; it was Snake Eyes, and the way he made her feel. She desperately wanted _him_. A distant part of her mind warned her that this was likely an effect of the oxytocin levels in her blood—something she'd forgotten to ask Doc about this morning but that she would talk to him about soon—but at the moment she didn't care. And it wasn't an indiscriminate hunger, like back at the island; this time it was very specifically focused on one person: Snake Eyes.

Although…she mused as she got out of bed and got dressed in a pair of soft yoga pants and an Army t-shirt, the experience with Cam, as much as she had hated it and not wanted it at the time had been…interesting. Was Cam bi? Or had she done it because she was ordered to, because she'd been forced to when she was a fifteen year old captive of her Aunt and Uncle in the upstate cabin, and did she truly like it or was she just going through the motions? Shana remembered being very, very angry with Cam when they'd gotten back to their cells after that episode, and she also remembered Cam saying 'I did what I thought I had to.' And looking back on it now, however reluctantly, Shana had to admit that Cam's actions had relieved her of that driving, drug-induced crazed need.

She needed to think, and she couldn't do that in the confines of her quarters. Usually she'd go for a run, but she knew she wasn't going to be able to do that now—she'd lost too much of her stamina and strength. Her arms had gotten tired just holding Auggie the day before, for pity's sake.

But maybe a light workout in the dojo… she slid out of bed and headed for the corner, reaching for the sword there. So thoughtful of him. She knew he had a universal disdain for the decorative weapons she collected and adorned the walls of their dojo with, both here at base and also back at their California cabin, and yet he'd bought this one. Not quite decorative, but not just functional either. An interesting compromise; she would have to discuss it with him.

Thinking of the dojo made her flush. When they couldn't sleep at night they'd go to the dojo and lock the door at two in the morning for a little…insomnia relief. If he was there now…

On a sudden inspiration she took off the t-shirt she wore and reached into the drawer for the pushup bra Courtney had given her before all of this had started. It really did make her boobs look bigger, and with a tight-fitting supportive exercise tank on top, it emphasized her curves and drew attention away from her thinness, and she smiled at her reflection in the mirror as she grabbed the sword and exited her quarters.

She nodded and smiled to the people she passed in the hall; Mainframe, who seemed suddenly tongue-tied and shy, and never looked up from the floor; Stalker, Snake Eyes' other best friend on base, whose eyes bugged out a bit and he had to clear his throat before managing a strangled 'Glad to see you up and about, Shana' before hurrying on his way. She knew it was because of the push-up bra, and she grinned to herself as she rounded the corner and stepped into the dojo.

She was alone; he wasn't here, apparently. But it also seemed oddly empty, and it wasn't until she stepped all the way in that she identified what had changed. There were empty spaces on the wall where some of her decorative swords had hung previously, the barrel with the wooden practice swords on it was half-empty, and the practice dummies and targets were gone.

She heard a sound behind her, and she turned to see Allie peeking in with Auggie bouncing comfortably on her shoulder, looking interested at these new surroundings. "I was in the girls only room when I saw you come in. Thought I'd say hi." She looked at Shana critically. "Wow. I like that pushup bra on you, you look fantastic."

Shana blushed. To hide it she said, "Have you seen Snake Eyes?"

Allie shook her head. "I haven't, no, but if you wait here for him long enough he'll show up."

Shana smiled as Allie stepped forward into the dojo. "I'll wait. In the meantime…can you tell me what happened to all our swords?"

Allie's smile disappeared. "You'll have to promise not to tell anyone." She looked at Auggie in her arms. "You too."

Auggie winked.

Shana pushed the door closed. "What happened?"

Allie sighed. "It was right after we came back with you and Cam. Charlie can look at Cam's file, since she's his wife, but you…Doc couldn't openly just hand Snake Eyes your file because you're not married and not family. So he…sort of arranged to leave it somewhere where Snake eyes could take a look at it. And after he was done…"Allie shook her head. "I swear he must have run through the entire base about five times, and then he came to the dojo and just…completely wrecked it. Attacked the practice dummies with every sword in here, snapped the wooden practice swords, dulled and blunted a lot of the blades. See that red one with the black wrapping?" She nodded to one sword hanging by the door. "Take that one down and look at it."

Shana reached up, took the indicated sword from the wall. It had always been one of her favorites, the black wrapping on the hilt was genuine rayskin, offering a better grip than one with synthetic materials. But as she drew it from its saya she understood just how angry Snake Eyes must have been; it was going to take a really long time to sharpen this blade again. The edge was dulled, there were deep dents and nicks in the edge of the blade, and it looked like it had been the instrument of someone's anger.

"He was…furious. I have never seen someone so angry. Not at you, but at the son of a bitch who dared to hurt you like that. Shana, none of us would have been able to predict what he would and wouldn't do if you didn't make it. We were all pulling for you because if we lost you, we'd lose him too." She finished softly, "I was so pleased when he proposed to you in the Rec room. I know you've joked about Dash and I for a really long time, but you and Snake Eyes…well, the both of you are just as deeply committed and you belong together. I wondered why you didn't make it official sooner."

Shana laughed at the image, but Allie was serious. "I remember seeing Snake Eyes sneaking into his room with a little box clutched in his fist about a week before Christmas—you were out helping Court shop for Wayne and I guess that was the ring—I think he meant to give it to you at Christmas. Things kind of derailed his plans, but I'm glad he did finally get a chance to give it to you." Allie stepped closer as Shana sheathed the sword. "Your panic attack kind of put a damper on tings, but…are you going to accept?"

Shana stared at Allie in astonishment. "Allie! I'm surprised you even have to ask. Of course I am. There's been no one but Snake Eyes for me since I met him." But even as she said that, she felt a twinge of uneasy guilt; she and Cam, on the island—did that qualify as cheating? Had she been unfaithful? And then a surge of anger; if Cam hadn't done what she did, she wouldn't be having these doubts right now. She pushed it aside stubbornly and focused on the conversation.

Allie was smiling. "Good, I thought that was what you'd say. Duke has the ring, he'll give it to Snake Eyes and Snake Eyes will get that to you. Oh, and as soon as you're able we'll have to start planning your wedding—Court is already trying to plan Cam and Charlie's."

"I don't care about theirs," Shana said, but even as she said it a small pang of guilt rant through her. What had happened to them on the island hadn't really been Cam's fault. But then again, neither had it been just Kennedy's; he'd ordered, but Cam hadn't had to comply with those orders, and there was still the fact that she hadn't trusted Shana with the secret of the tracer. Granted, she didn't know that Shana had counter-narco-interrogation training, but it wasn't an excuse.

Allie bit her lip. "Shana, I don't know what happened between the two of you on that island. She won't talk about it and you just…seem really angry. But whatever it is, she feels desperately sorry and guilty about it; she cries when I mention your name, and Charlie says she begs for you to forgive her when she has nightmares and she talks in her sleep. I don't know what it is, but she's desperately sorry, and maybe if you went to her and just…at least hear her out…she won't feel so bad. Doc hasn't said anything but I can tell he's a little worried her mental state is holding back her recovery; she's not eating, not gaining back the strength she should, and he hasn't even told her that she might not be able to dance anymore after this because he's worried that will send her over the edge into a suicidal depression."

_She can't dance anymore?_ Shana almost asked, but then bit her lip on that question. She was angry at Cam, and she wasn't supposed to be concerned…but the thought of Cam not being able to dance was like thinking of a bird with a broken wing. Diminished, somehow, less than what she was. It hurt just thinking about it. What had been done to her that would take away her ability to dance? Instead, she said to Allie, "I'll think about it."

Her voice must have come out harsher than it sounded because Allie's lips tightened into a thin, hard line. "Do that." And, with Auggie in her arms, she spun away from Shana and left the dojo.

Alone now, Shana took one of the unsharpened practice weapons and ran through some basic sword drills, putting aside her uncertainty, her doubts, her anger aside and just concentrating on the physical movement, on the forms, on the grace and balance she'd come to expect from herself. She still remembered the forms, the moves, the sequence of thrust-and-parry that comprised a basic sword drill, but her body was lacking in stamina and her arms lacked strength, and after about half an hour she was shaking so badly from fatigue that she simply couldn't keep going.

Baby steps. A little at a time. She wiped her brow with one hand and took the rayskin sword down from the wall again. Her favorite. She set that down on the mat in the middle of the room, then looked around until she spotted Snake Eyes' favorite; a black steel sword with an ebony wood handle. She placed that on the mat in the middle of the dojo, went to a small bank of drawers set into one wall, and took out two sword polishing kits, one 'Snake Eyes' (as marked by his name in black kanji characters stamped into the wood on top of the box) and one her own ('Scarlett' in kanji, stamped in red on the top of her box.

By the time Snake Eyes wandered into the dojo twenty minutes later, she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, tranquilly polishing her sword. His polishing kit and his favorite sword lay on the mat across from her, a mute invitation for him to join her. He looked at the scene quietly for a long moment, then sat down opposite her on the mat and opened his polishing kit as he took his favorite sword in his lap.

And for a long time the only sound in the dojo was the tranquilly hypnotic swishing of polishing and sharpening stones against steel.

She got friendly looks and nods in the mess hall, but after the initial greeting, a lot of eyes wandered a little south of her chin, got stuck there as the owner of the eyes turned bright red, and then some kind of incoherent mumble would stumble out and the person she was talking to would back off and disappear. She was slightly miffed that everyone would have noticed after two minutes of talking to her, but Snake Eyes had spent the entire afternoon with her in the dojo polishing swords with her and not once had he commented on her suddenly-enhanced upper story; he seemed completely oblivious. She'd taken a break and wandered down to the mess to get herself something to eat. She was frustrated and wondering if he was really all that serous about marrying her—after all, if he couldn't read her body language enough to know what she was subtly inviting him to do, how was she going to spend the rest of her life at his side? She was looking annoyed and grumpy when a pair of legs stopped beside her table. "If you stare at your milk that hard you'll sour it," said a familiar male voice and she looked up into Duke's quietly amused eyes.

She stood and grinned at him, then wrapped him impulsively in a hug. It felt good to be able to hug him—while he didn't have the same place in her heart that Snake Eyes did, he was one of her oldest and best friends and she had missed him too. "Missed you, Conrad," she said as she sat back down and indicated he should too.

He didn't take a seat right away, instead eyeing her warily. "Is this a setup?"

She frowned. "What do you mean, a setup?"

"You're wearing…um…you've sort of…enhanced…the way you look," and dear God, the man was actually _blushing_. She'd forgotten how cute he was when he blushed. Not as cute as Snake Eyes blushing, but then, no one was as cute as Snake Eyes. Not to her anyway. And she was the only one who counted.

"No, it's not a setup," she huffed as she ran a hand distractedly through her hair, something she only did when she was annoyed. "Duke, answer me something. How come every male I've walked past today wearing this getup has noticed except Snake Eyes?"

Duke narrowed his eyes as he sat at the mess hall table beside her. "Wait. Back up there. _Snake Eyes _didn't notice?" he asked. "Did he really _not_ notice or did he just not say anything to you?"

She blinked as she thought about it. "Well…I guess maybe it's possible he just didn't say anything, but he's not usually that…dense." She meant to say 'subtle' but 'dense' came out instead.

And then she had to stare at Duke in annoyance as the man laughed. _Laughed_. And she suspected he was laughing at her. She stared. He laughed. She stared some more. He laughed harder. It wasn't until she started tapping her foot, a sure sign that that redhaired Irish temper was getting close to the surface, that he reined it in and wiped his eyes. "Shana, he noticed. I _guarantee_ you he noticed. He couldn't have _not_ noticed."

"Then why didn't he say something?" Annoyance was gone, replaced with frustration and near tears. "The only reason I wore this was because I wanted him to notice me! I tried everything, I even left the bathroom door open while I was getting into the bath to entice him in and get him to…to…" okay she couldn't say that in front of Conrad, but she knew he knew what she was trying to say by the way his eyes widened. "I'm healed. Doc said so. I'm perfectly normal. And he just proposed to me. I want him, Conrad, I want him so badly I'm even willing to put on this ridiculous…bra…" _torture device_, "…to try and get his attention and it's not working!"

Duke raised an eyebrow. "Want some advice?" She nodded mutely. "Grab some of those brownies and some of that whipped cream. You guys have been in the dojo all afternoon, right? And you're both going to be spending the evening there? Take the brownies and whipped cream back with you and…be less subtle. I guarantee you he'll be a little less…dense."

Not two minutes after Shana had left with four brownies and a can of whipped cream, Snake Eyes walked into the mess hall and looked around. Not seeing Shana, he walked up to Duke and signed, _Have you seen Shana?_

"Um. Yeah. I've seen her." One comment about Shana's suddenly fuller figure and Conrad had a feeling Snake Eyes would rip his lips off. "Snake Eyes. Here." He slapped the small velvet ring box into the ninja's hand. "Word of advice, my friend—you and Shana know each other better than any two other people on this base. Go back to the dojo. She's waiting for you. And then…pay attention to what her body's trying to tell you."


	18. Chapter 79: Revelations

**Chapter 79: Revelations**

_Pay_ _attention to what her body's trying to tell you._

Conrad's words mystified him even as he suppressed a surge of annoyance at the actual words. It wasn't as if he was _not_ paying attention, he could hardly have missed Shana's suddenly much fuller bust, or the suddenly provocative sway of her hips—he'd walked in, one day, on Courtney trying to teach Shana to walk like a runway model, with that little sway to her hips. Shana had been subtly mocking the whole lesson, the exaggerated bump of her hips making more fun of the whole lesson than she was actually learning anything from it. But today, moving quietly around the dojo taking swords down and putting cleaned, polished, sharpened ones back up, he'd seen her catlike grace, mostly hidden under the jerkiness of her still-healing body but quietly coming out nonetheless. And he'd noticed her bust.

Hell, yeah, he'd noticed her bust. He couldn't have _not_ noticed it. Absolutely impossible.

He'd had to concentrate very hard indeed on polishing the swords. She couldn't possibly be healed enough for…for what his treacherous mind was thinking, couldn't possibly be ready for…him…not this soon after Kennedy.

And yet…how else was he to interpret what Conrad was saying?

He rounded the corner, opened the door to the dojo…and stopped.

Shana was sitting there nonchalantly in the middle of the floor with another sword and her polishing kit, busily putting an edge on it. But she was dressed in nothing but that damn push-up bra and panties, and there was a brightly-colored Christmas package bow sitting in the accentuated cleavage between her breasts.

Little Snake Eyes rose to attention.

Snake Eyes ordered himself to stand down even as Shana got up and came to meet him (did she have to move her hips in quite that way?) He couldn't take his eyes off them, imagining those hips doing a certain something else, preferably on top of him. _Stop it. She's not ready for that yet. She can't possibly be ready for that yet._

She took a step backward and put her hands on her hips. "Snake Eyes, if I wasn't ready for it yet I wouldn't have been asking you all day for it!" she made an annoyed sound as she reached down to his suddenly nerveless hand and plucked the small velvet-covered box out of it. "Thank you for giving me my ring back." She opened the box, took the little circle of gold and emeralds from it, and slipped it on her left ring finger, then closed the box and placed it on top of her polishing kit. "Now are you going to come kiss me properly and are we going to celebrate our engagement, or do I have to try and entice you further?" She reached down, and for the first time he saw the plate with the brownies and the can of whipped cream beside it.

He gulped hard.

Her expression softened and she came over to him, wrapping her arms around him. As she did so, she dislodged the bow in her cleavage and he got a generous peek at the expanse of creamy flesh between the two satiny straps of the bra. "I know you think I'm not ready, Snake Eyes, but really, I am. Ever since a couple of days ago, when you washed me in the tub, I've been wanting you more and more. I think part of it might be the Oxytocin still in me, but nothing's going to help that but time, and I really do miss you and I want to celebrate our engagement." She leaned in against him. "Please?"

And he had promised that when he got her back he'd never deny her anything she wanted again. His body seconded the thought, only too happy to rise to the occasion, and as he reached around to unhook the bra from behind her, letting it drop and exposing the fair porcelain, lightly-freckled surface of her breasts, he could think of nothing but desire. There was little evidence of her ordeal on her skin here, just smooth perfect skin, untouched, unblemished, and he started kissing her full breasts, licking tiny beads of sweat from their lightly-freckled surface.

Her head fell back on her neck, her fingers twined in his hair, and that breathy moan told him that he was doing something right.

"Stop…analyzing…just get on…with it…" was her breathy comment, and he chuckled around the mouthful of flesh in his lips.

The swords lay forgotten, polishing kits pushed aside. Snake Eyes lay flat on the floor, ignoring, for the moment, that the flatness and hardness of the floor under him was hurting his back. What did it matter? He had Shana, _his_ Shana, back, and at the moment she was a warm, comfortable weight on his chest, her head rising and falling with his breath. Both of them were gloriously nude and filmed with sweat.

It took long minutes to raise his hands and sign. _You're going to be the death of me with stunts like cream._

She propped her chin on the back of her hand, her palm warm on the skin over his heart, the gold band with the line of emeralds winking on her finger. Somehow, even though she'd just put it on, it seemed right, like it belonged there. Now he just had to find wedding rings suitable for their personalities and lifestyles. "Ah, but Snake Eyes, what a way to go."

He grinned. _A boner and a smile? You might have a bit of trouble explaining that at the funeral._

She laughed, and it was the most wonderful sound in the world. He'd missed that laugh. Missed the woman more than the laugh. It had been so long since he'd heard it, and now his eyes teared up and his heart ached as he sat up and hugged her to him tightly.

"I'm not completely normal. Yet. I still have a long way to go, Snake Eyes. Auggie shouldn't feel heavy to me but my arms were shaking as I was trying to hold him earlier today. And before you got here, earlier—I tried a few sword drills and I get so tired, so quickly." She sighed. "I still have a long way to go before I'm back to being myself."

Snake Eyes' hands flashed. _Then you and Cam will be able to help each other get back to normal._

Shana shook her head. "No. it's not going to work out that way. That friendship's over."

He looked at her, his gaze so intense that she barely noticed his nudity. _Shana, let's get this worked out. Why are you so mad at Cam? She went far and above what anyone would have expected anyone to do for a friend, for a comrade in arms, even for a sister. Do you think that self-centered narcissistic sister of yours, Siobhan, would have ever even _thought_ about doing what Cam did for you?_

Shana shook her head, looked down at her hands. "It's not that, Snake Eyes."

_Then what is it?_

Hesitiation. "You wouldn't understand."

_Then make me understand. Shana, Cam's tearing herself apart over this rift between you. She feels it's all her fault, that she deserves your hatred, and her mental state is slowing her healing. Let's get this worked out once and for all, now. What happened to destroy your friendship?_

"I…I…" Shana didn't want to say it; hot tears pricked her eyes. "I was unfaithful to you." She saw his look and more tears flowed as she stammered, "I…they drugged me…and it just made me…so crazy…I needed…and they gave me too much of the drug and couldn't keep up with me, so they brought Cam in and told her to…to…and she did…and…I didn't want it, Snake Eyes, I didn't want it, there's never been anyone but you for me, you have to believe that, please…"

Pieces clicked into place for Snake Eyes. That one intense dream he'd had, of Shana tied and needy, and Cam, on her knees, doing…that had developed the rift between the two women. Shana was feeling guilty about _that_? She thought he was going to be mad at her for being unfaithful?

_Baby, there was no way you could have helped that. The drugs made you act that way, and I don't fault Cam for doing what she did either. You were suffering and she wanted to make you feel better. You shouldn't hate her for that, baby, because I don't. I'm…_ he thought about that dream, that night, and found it was true; he could only feel relief and gratitude to Cam for sparing Shana more of that. _I'm glad she did it and I could never imagine hating her for what she did. I'm grateful she helped you. _He didn't even know if he could have—as much as he loved making love to Shana, the thought of trying to make love to her tied down and unwilling and drugged would have taken away his desire. _I don't consider that as you having been unfaithful._

"You don't?" Shana said, and he shook his head. Something changed then, a subtle shift behind her eyes. Relief, maybe? A relaxing of guilt and tension? He didn't know, didn't care. It was enough that some of the unhappiness lurking behind her eyes was gone.

It wasn't the end of her issues, however, he discovered as she went on. "And it wasn't just that. I'm her commanding officer, Snake Eyes, and she's supposed to share information with me in a POW situation. She knows that, having gone through SERE with Clayton over the summer. And she didn't, she trusted herself to keep the information secret, but not me." She said slightly reluctantly. "Now, granted, she's allergic to barbital-type drugs and they never tried again after that first time when she almost died of anaphylaxis—" and Jesus, she still remembered seeing the frantic panic in Cam's eyes as she fought to breathe through the paralysis that gripped her body, remembered her own frightened determination to keep Cam from dying, "and she also doesn't know about my training, but she should still have trusted me with the secret. It would have helped me endure a lot of what they did to me." She finished with a determined shake of her head. "It's that, most of all, that I can't forgive her for."

Snake Eyes let go of her hand and reached for his clothes. _Get dressed,_ he signed to her_. Get dressed. I want to show you something._

They went back to Shana's quarters, and she sat there wondering as he pulled out his laptop, then disappeared out the door even as he commanded her to 'wait'. She waited as he'd told her, wondering what he had up his sleeve; she wondered still more as he came back with a flash drive and plugged it into a port on his laptop. He then cued up an audiofile and handed her the earphones as he hit 'play'.

Shana's eyes widened in disbelief as she heard her own voice. "Snake Eyes…this is the audiofeed from Cam's tracer?"

He nodded, gestured imperiously to her to listen. Shana did…and felt the blood drain from her face as she recognized first Damien's voice, and then her own:

Damien: "What is your real name?"

Shana: "Shana."

Damien: "Are you a slave?"

Shana: "No."

Damien: "Where were you captured?"

Shana: "Africa."

Damien: "Where do you live?"

Shana: "Fort Wadsworth, New York."

And then the English stopped, and Shana's efforts to think in Gaelic kicked in. Snake Eyes held his hands up in front of her eyes and signaled slowly but distinctly, _Allie knows Gaelic, Shana. She knows what you said. She told us that you spilled a lot of our secrets. You can hear yourself, and know the truth of what Allie said._

Shana felt tears spill down her cheeks. So much for her training. She knew everything she said, could hear every word, heard her own voice slurring the Gaelic syllables as she sang an Irish drinking song before Snake Eyes stopped the audio; her hands pulled the earphones from her ears as she whispered, "I told him everything. Everything any of our enemies ever wanted to know about it, I described the layout of the base as if I was taking a jog through it, all five miles of it. Oh my God."

_Cam doesn't fully understand Gaelic, but I'm sure she's picked up on a few words here and there, with the way you and Allie speak it when you girls are discussing something you don't want us guys to know. And the beginning of that, in English…you told them where you lived, and if anyone had heard that who was familiar at all with US military bases they would have known this wasn't on the surface, an active base. They would have known our secrets. Because you told them._ He didn't want to make her feel guilty, he just wanted her to understand Cam's point of view, wanted Shana to see exactly why she'd done what she did. _Cam knew that. And that was why she didn't tell you. And on top of that she was suffering from dehydration, starvation, malnourishment, and blood loss from the barbaric reconstruction that female doctor did on her breast. She wasn't thinking straight._

"Rosa did a pretty good job on her breast. She looked almost normal except for the stitches. She has to be happy with how it looks, at least."

Snake Eyes stared at her. _You have to be kidding. When you think about what she went through while Rosa did that, how can you say that, Shana?_

"Say what? What did she go through?"

_Rosa Capelletti injected Cam with a paralytic agent, then injected her vocal cords with something that took away her ability to talk while at the same time containing a stimulant that would keep her from passing out. Then she stripped the scar tissue from Cam's right breast while Cam was still awake and stitched the skin grafts she took from Cam's leg…also while Cam was awake. Cam passed out a couple of times and Rosa woke her back up just so she could continue—until just before the end, when Cam fainted for the last time and Rosa couldn't wake her up. I would bet Doc would have diagnosed Cam as having entered a light coma at that point from shock and pain and blood loss._

Shana stood, swaying, her face pale. "Oh God. Oh Jesus." She ran to the bathroom and was violently sick, then, without even pausing, she left her room and tore down the hallway toward Cam and Charlie's quarters. And she didn't even knock, she just opened the door.

Cam was standing with her back to the door, gingerly lifting her arms so Charlie could try and get a soft, worn, t-shirt over her head. "It's okay, Cam, it's okay. I know it hurts, sweetheart, just a little higher, try to get the elbow up enough to get the shirt on…"

Shana's horrified eyes took in the sight of Cam's back. Livid keloid scars writhed all over Cam's back, scars on top of scars, the thin fire-created scar tissue that covered her back stretched even thinner and tighter with the massive keloids. On her shoulder blade, right where the barbed wire whip had literally skinned Cam's back, the scar tissue had pinched tight, stressed to the point where just raising her left elbow enough to get this t-shirt over her head was obviously causing her pain.

Shana felt tears stream, unchecked and unheeded, down her cheeks. All she could see in her mind was the first time she'd seen Cam dancing, the extraordinary grace, suppleness, and beauty of her friend airborne, leaping, smiling, truly happy, bright in her mind. And Shana couldn't see how the pain-wracked, scarred young woman in front of her now was ever going to be able to dance like that again—it just didn't look possible for that scar tissue to ever stretch enough to give her the same flexibility and freedom of movement again. She barely recognized her own voice choking out Cam's name.

Cam had just managed to get her elbow into the sleeve, with Charlie's help; now she turned at the sound of Shana's voice, and tears welled up in her own eyes. "Shana…"

Shana stepped forward. One step, just inside Cam and Charlie's quarters, and then she stopped, the enormity of the wrong she'd done her friend hitting her like a ton of bricks. Snake Eyes was right, Cam had done what no one, not any of Shana's friends here, not any of her own family, would have done, just to find Shana and get her home, and it had come at a steep price. Cam had literally sacrificed a very precious part of her life, an integral part of who she was, just to find Shana and bring her back, had endured something unimaginable that had taken away the only thing in her life she truly loved; her ability to dance. Her shoulders were sloped and uneven now, a result of the scars pulling the skin of her back and limbs into unnatural shapes, deforming her spine and restricting her arms. "Cam…oh God, sweetheart, I am so, so sorry…"

And suddenly her arms were full of her friend as Cam fell into her arms, crying and crying as if her heart would break. "I know, I know, I look horrible, and oh, Shana I don't think I'll ever dance again, but it was worth it, you were worth it, I would do it all again knowing it brought you home, no matter what it cost me…" Hysterical sobbing followed, and Shana collapsed onto the bed next to her, both girls with arms wrapped around each other, and Charlie saw Snake Eyes in the hallway behind Shana, and he stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.

Both men looked at each other, and neither one's eyes were quite dry.


	19. Chapter 80: Awakening

**Chapter 80: Awakening**

Cam said she was sorry so many times that Shana finally said, gently but with exasperation in her voice, "Cam, you've said you're sorry almost twenty times since I walked in an hour ago. I got it, okay? You have nothing to be sorry for. I understand what you did, and I'm not blaming you. Not anymore." She thought about it as she stretched out on the army cot beside Cam; the hysterical crying had drained Cam to the point of exhaustion, but Shana knew from having worked with her on her CPTSD that if Cam went to sleep upset, her emotional state was going to carry over into her dreams and she would have nightmares. And unlike before, when she could get up and go for a run around base to exhaust herself back to sleep, this time it wasn't even remotely possible. Shana was willing to bet that part of the reason why Cam was so bad was that she wasn't getting undisturbed sleep, too stressed and exhausted by nightmares to sleep and too tired and restless during the day.

She'd had to help Cam lie down on her side; despite her own weight loss, her own lack of muscle and strength, she was in far better shape than Cam, and looking at her friend now after three weeks of healing, Shana couldn't even imagine what she'd come in looking like.

So she laid Cam down on the bed, tucking her friend in comfortably, then stretched out on the army cot beside her. She understood, now, why it was there—the slightest movement of Shana's knee on the mattress as she made the bed around her friend's fragile body made Cam gasp and her eyes tear with pain. Shana was very careful not to bump against the bed as she lay down, slightly tired herself after a day that seemed like one of the longest of her life. On the surface of it, it didn't seem long…but it had been momentous in terms of emotional healing.

But as she and Cam lay there next to each other and talked, slowly the details of Cam's experiences came out. For the first time Shana heard about her experiences in the slave market, although there were long silences and sudden sentence shifts that Shana, with her counter-intelligence training, knew meant Cam was hiding some things, not being entirely truthful, and she resolved to talk to Allie and Conrad at some point about exactly what had happened when they dropped Cam off at the market.

She remembered some of the layout of the market, but a great deal was washed in the foggy gray haze of the drugs. It had been a blessing in disguise, she thought now as she heard Cam describe some of the uglier things she'd seen (Shana was sure Cam was keeping the worst of it from her) and it annoyed her even as it touched her. Cam was still trying to protect her.

Then Cam described their arrival at the island, and Shana interrupted her as she told Cam, quietly, that she'd heard the audiofeed from the tracer of her first drugged interrogation with Kennedy. She told the younger woman about her counter-narco-interrogation training, about what she'd been told—to think in a language that a captor might not necessarily know, and Cam nodded quietly. "I gathered that maybe you must have had something like that but I didn't know how extensive—and I didn't know how long you'd be able to hold out. Shana, I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the tracer, but I…I didn't know if you'd be able to keep it a secret, I didn't know if you'd be able to not think about it and I wanted to tell you, I wanted to tell you so much a couple of times but I was so afraid they'd find it that I just…I couldn't take the risk. I'm so sorry!"

Shana rolled her eyes, but smiled as she patted Cam's hand gently—it was about the only place on the younger woman that wasn't cut, bruised, scratched and hurting right now. "For the last time, stop apologizing, okay? I told you already you have nothing to be sorry for and if I'd been you I probably would have made the same decision." And as she finished saying that, she realized it was true; knowing what Cam had known at the time, she most likely would have made the same decisions.

So they talked. And talked. For several hours, and Shana watched as Cam's body language slowly relaxed. _She's been keeping a lot of this bottled up inside._ _I wonder if she's even talked to Charlie about it. _But as Cam relaxed more, her eyelids got heavier and heavier, and the next thing Shana knew there was a hand on her own shoulder gently shaking her awake.

Snake Eyes placed a finger over his lips and signaled for quiet even as Shana disengaged her hand from Cam's—she'd fallen asleep holding Cam's hand. _Both of you fell asleep while talking. Come on and let Charlie get some rest now. _Shana flushed as she saw Charlie standing just behind Snake Eyes, grinning; he followed Shana and Snake Eyes outside the room, leaving Cam asleep.

"She hasn't slept that peacefully since she came back," Charlie said quietly as Snake Eyes closed the door behind them so their voices wouldn't disturb Cam. "Thank you for being willing to talk to her, Shana. I know it can't have been easy, for either her or you."

"Cam's way of coping is to keep things bottled up. And it's bad for her, she needs to let stuff out in order to heal mentally." And good for her too, she realized as she stretched. She felt better herself; almost normal. "Has she talked to you at all?" Shana stretched the kinks from her back, thinking about her own bed now.

"She told me a little bit. Here and there. But she doesn't really have to talk to me, Shana, while she was gone I was dreamwalking, trying to be with her as much as possible, so I know a lot of what she went through." Charlie nodded to Snake Eyes. "He knows some of what you went through, too."

"What's dreamwalking?"

Charlie tilted his head thoughtfully. "Were there any times during your…while you were gone…that you could almost feel Snake Eyes in the same room with you, watching you, helping you and keeping an eye on you?"

Shana stared at him, and Snake Eyes, in astonishment. "Well…yes, I did. Even a couple of times when I was drugged, and a few times when things got…really intense…it felt like he was right next to me. How did you know?"

"Because what he did was a form of psychic projection. You two are so closely bonded that his desire to be with you was realized by his ability to reach across the intervening distance and be with you in spirit if not physically. I'm sure you've heard of tests where twins are separated and placed in separate rooms and one twin is shown pictures while the other answers questions, and it turns out that there's a higher-than-average probability of the answers being correct?" Shana and Snake Eyes both nodded. "When we're all feeling better I'd like to try that on the two of you."

"Charlie?" came a soft voice from inside the room, and Charlie opened the door quickly. Cam was blinking sleepily in the bed.

"I'm just saying good night to Snake Eyes and Shana. I'll be in in a minute, sweetheart." Cam nodded, her eyelids already closing, and Charlie turned back to Shana and Snake Eyes. "All right. Let me go back in to my wife, and we'll talk some more later." He vanished into the room and closed the door.

Shana and Snake Eyes started off down the hall. _He's right about the dreamwalking. While you were gone, if I slipped into a meditative trance I could feel this invisible thread connecting me to you, and if I followed it I could reach you. I knew a lot of what happened to you even before I heard the audiofeed from Cam's tracer._ He stopped, then started, more tentatively, _Shana, I'm sorry if I was harsh on you earlier. Dr. Huang, the FBI psychiatrist, said not to tell you until you were stronger, but it just all of a sudden felt like the right time. Both you and Cam were hurting and I believed neither you nor she was going to be able to start emotionally healing until you fixed things up between the two of you and had a chance to talk._

Shana sighed. "I'm not upset, Snake Eyes, and I'm not mad. I realize that now. I just…everything happened so fast, and I was so afraid that you wouldn't love me anymore, that you'd see me as weak and undesirable and I knew losing you was going to kill me so I was just trying not to talk or think about it, and it was just—" she stopped because he'd stopped walking and planted a finger on her lips for silence as his fingers moved.

_I love you, Shana O'Hara. More than my own life. I could no more stop breathing than I could stop loving you. While you were gone it felt like part of me was missing. I never realized just what you meant to me, how much I depended on you for things. Here I kept thinking of myself as a solitary loner who didn't need anything, but I did. I needed you. And I didn't realize it until you were gone. We always eat together—so when we went through the mess line you knew what to tell the servers to put on my tray and what to put on yours. Suddenly I had to put my tray down and point to what I wanted._

_Remember that movie that came out last summer, the one that we both wanted to see, but I was self-conscious about my appearance and wouldn't go with you and the others to the movie theater to see it? I saw Courtney walk into her quarters with it when it came out while you were gone, and all I could think about was how much you'd wanted to see it and how selfish I was for not going with you. And our cabin in California—I regretted that I'd never put your name on the deed. I let you have a hand in renovating, expanding and adding to it, but I never once even thought about putting you on the deed. And when you came back, the fact that we weren't married left Doc with a dilemma—he wanted to give me your medical file so I'd know how to help you but we have no official legal ties to each other so he couldn't—legally—and he ended up just leaving me alone in the same room with it so I could look without him getting in trouble. _

_I want that to stop, Shana. I want there to be no more secrets between us. I want to be by your side, every moment of every day, for the rest of your life, no matter how long or how short it is. I want to be your partner, soulmate, best friend and husband. You're wearing the ring, but you never answered the question; Shana O'Hara, will you marry me?_

For answer, Shana pressed her lips against his, kissing him long and deep and fervently, until her lungs reminded her that breathing was a necessary part of life, and wasn't optional. As she finally pulled back, his grin was truly insufferable.

That was when she smacked the side of his head with an open palm. Gently. But it was a smack nonetheless.

His hand came up to the side of his head as he started at her, nonplussed. _What did you do that for?_

"Because I didn't _have_ to say it. You already _knew_ I'd marry you." She grinned at him, the wicked, merry grin he was used to seeing on her face, the smile he'd missed so much, the humor that he'd wondered sometimes over the last two and a half months if he'd ever see again. "And also because sometimes there's no better way to say I love you to a man than to whack him upside the head." The grin grew wider. "Allie taught me that."

Snake Eyes shook with silent laughter as he remembered Allie's fights with Dash.

Shana waited for him to stop laughing, then linked her arm with his. "All right. I want to stop in and see Doc before we go back to our room. It'll probably be the last night we spend there—since we're now officially engaged, I think Allie will try to bully Clayton into letting us have that larger room right next to Charlie and Cam. Imagine, no more sneaking out of my room at four in the morning to be back in the guys' wing by five."

He could see it. And it looked wonderful.

"I can see you're feeling much better," Doc was looking positively cheerful about it as Shana and Snake Eyes walked into the infirmary—quietly, as only two martial artists could, so as to avoid waking the baby in the bassinet next to Liv's bedside…and Clayton, sitting in a chair next to Liv's bed asleep with his head pillowed on her hand. "Come on into my office."

Neither of them said anything until the office door closed behind them, then Shana started with, "Cam and I patched things up."

The grin on Doc's face grew wider. "I'm glad. The rift between the two of you was hurting her as much physically as it was mentally."

Shana narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean?"

Doc grew serious. "Your being angry with her was causing her emotional pain. And she spent too much time stressing over it and not enough time focusing on her recovery, and I was worried that if her mental state didn't pick up soon, her body was going to shut down." He hesitated. "I didn't tell Charlie, but…there were a couple of times when I really thought I'd have to bring her back to the infirmary, baby or no baby, and hook her up to life support. I don't want to make you feel guilty, you were dealing with your own issues, but after that confrontation in your quarters, she just lost all will and desire to keep going and she took such a downturn for a couple days that Charlie was having to carry her to the bathroom because she was too weak to even stand. Will is a very large part of being able to survive something as horrific as what you both went through, and she…lost hers for a little while. If she weren't married to Charlie and had him beside her, we would have lost her."

Shana was frozen silent for a long moment trying to digest this, her eyes sparkling with tears. "I…didn't know. I'm…so sorry. Doc…when I went to see her…her back…"

"She was debating whether to get treatment for her scarring prior to this incident; I spoke with her about it before she and Charlie left for their honeymoon. She didn't really see a need, Charlie only saw her, not her scars, just like you only see Snake Eyes, and not his scars. Now, though…she's going to have to get treatment for it because—well, if you saw her back...there's no way she'll be able to continue being a soldier with her back warped. I tried my best to stretch her skin under the bandages so the scar tissue would form and still allow her freedom of movement, but she developed keloids—and they are growing, enough to cause permanent tightness in some areas of her skin and is deforming her joints, limiting her movement. I was trying not to tell her but she came straight out and asked me if she was going to dance again...I had to tell her it's unlikely the way she looks now. If she doesn't get some sort of treatment for it, the scars will grow worse and I'm afraid it'll cripple her for life." Shana remembered the scars twisting out across Cam's back. "I'm researching where she can go for the best possible results—price is no object because the military takes care of its own, and she's also quite wealthy on top of it, although she doesn't know that—Clayton told me that the money Allie and Conrad brought back after 'selling' Cam at the market wasn't put into general fund, he couldn't bear to even touch the stuff so he had it transferred to her payroll account. All ten thousand dollars."

"T-ten thousand dollars?" Shana's eyes were wide. "Kennedy paid two hundred fifty thousand for us both!"

"There is no value that can be placed on human life. Any amount of money paid to purchase another human being is an insult," Doc said, tight-lipped with anger.

And as if sensing the angry swirl of emotions so close to him, Auggie opened his mouth and began to howl.

Shana was out of the office and beside his bassinet seconds later, scooping him out of the nest of blankets and hugging him, cooing gently, humming softly as she grabbed for the bottle on the table beside the bassinet. He fussed a little as she presented the bottle to him, but eventually accepted it and began to suck as Shana crooned a Gaelic lullaby to him, her voice mellifluous and sweet.

"That's…pretty," came a gentle but raspy voice from behind and below her, and Shana spun, to see Olivia, eyes open, awake, looking up at her.

"You're awake!" Shana wanted to yell jubilantly, but one look at Clayton, asleep, and Auggie, determinedly applying himself to the task of getting himself on the outside of the bottle's contents, made her drop her voice even as she fell to her knees beside Olivia's bed. "You're awake! Hey, Auggie, your Mom's awake!"

Olivia stretched her arms out for him, and Shana rose to her feet, bending carefully to put Auggie in Liv's arms. Olivia's eyes filled with tears as she looked at him, perfect fingers, toes, and bright blue eyes—which, contrary to Doc's predictions, showed no signs of changing to brown; he was going to be a brown-haired boy with his father's piercing blue eyes. "He's perfect."

Shana snorted. "He'd better be, after all the trouble you went through to bring him into this world! And then Doc trying to keep you alive!" She gestured to Clayton, who was starting to stir. "Clayton's been next to useless waiting for you to wake up."

And as she said that, Clayton turned his head, looked at Olivia, with Auggie in her arms, smiling at him…and he stood up to kiss her forehead with tears streaming unashamedly down his cheeks. "Good morning, sweetheart," he said, his voice shaking. "I missed you…oh God, I missed you…" and he pressed his forehead to Liv's, and his tears mingled with hers as the tiny family hugged for the first time.

Shana nodded quietly to Doc, and she and Snake Eyes slipped discreetly out of the infirmary.

"She's awake!" Shana bounced a little on her bed, so happy she couldn't sit still.

Snake Eyes grinned as he wrapped his hands around her hips and applied pressure. _Settle down or you'll break the bed._

Her smile went from happy to mischievously sexy in one second. "Well, breaking this one would be worth it if they gave me another one. Slightly bigger."

_Why bigger? I love being this close to you._

She giggled as she straddled him, her hips working back and forth, rubbing her crotch against his. He groaned with the sensation, his eyelids fluttering closed. "Because, sweetheart, there are so many more things I can do to you in a bigger bed."

His mind tumbled head over heels and landed in the gutter.

"I…missed you….so much…" Shana said breathlessly into his mouth. "And…I was so helpless…with Kennedy…being able to do…what I want to now…feels good."

Snake Eyes understood, and relaxed. She'd been under Kennedy's control for so long, forced to do things she didn't want to do, that now that she had control back she was going to exercise it. Sexually. He wasn't afraid; he was a fit, in-shape male in the prime of his life and they both loved each other, and he trusted Shana not to hurt him. And even if she pushed it…well, after what had happened to her, he honestly wouldn't blame her if she did want to hurt men. All men. He wondered how she and Cam could be so forgiving…and wondered if Cam and Charlie would ever be able to enjoy a physical relationship again.

The moments that followed turned into a sort of subtle test of wills. He was determined to keep his hands in place and try to maintain control of his own body. She, it seemed, was equally determined to make him lose his, and while he understood her reasoning—she'd been under the control of a male for so long that she wanted to get it back—he also didn't want to make it too easy for her, didn't want her to feel like he'd given up and let her win; that would have been a subtle form of control. He had taught her that lesson, many years ago, and as she continued to work him, playing with him, he knew that she hadn't forgotten that.

He slipped into a trance, letting his subconscious take over and just react as he reached for her with his conscious mind, finding and tracing that bright inner thread that bound the both of them together and following that to its source. Her mind was a bright golden flame in the darkness, and that bright flame reached out and enveloped his consciousness, and he found himself wrapped, cocooned in a bright cradle of fire and heat and passion, the white heat of her sexual need flooding him, infecting him, turning his cool solidity into simmering passion. For Snake Eyes, it was an intense sensation, feeling himself both male and also simultaneously female. And despite Snake Eyes wondering if he was hurting her, wondering if her body had healed enough for these sexual calisthenics, he wasn't getting pain from her, just a feeling of fullness, of rightness, of welcome and need and desire.


	20. Chapter 81: Extrasensory Perception

**Chapter 81: Extrasensory Perception**

"Take it easy now. If you get tired just let us know."

Cam huffed out a breath in exasperation. "I got it, okay, Doc? It's not like I'm actually really exerting myself. Charlie's got me on one side and you're hovering on the other, and Shana's the only one with enough sense to realize that I have to push myself a little if I want to get stronger!" But her smile took the sting out of her words as she looked at Charlie, and her eyes glowed.

Doc shook his head. "A week and a half ago you were in so much pain that Charlie couldn't even lie in the same bed with you. Now you're up and you're trying to make the walk all the way to the gym."

"The workout room," Shana and Cam said at the same time, then grinned at each other. "But no, really," Shana said cheerfully as they stopped to let Cam catch her breath, leaning against Charlie's solid, comforting bulk, "This is something we really need to figure out. I felt Snake Eyes with me while we were…on the island…and Charlie knows details about Cam's experiences that he couldn't possibly know by normal means, so if we want to prove this extrasensory perception really exists to you, we have to test it. And then after we get done we have to plan Cam and Charlie's wedding."

"And yours," Cam said to Shana and Snake Eyes as their little group of five resumed walking.

"And mine," Shana agreed cheerfully. "If I leave it up to my family to plan our wedding we'll never get married. My sister doesn't like Snake Eyes much."

"That's an understatement," Doc snorted. "I don't think Shana's sister even likes Shana much."

"It's mutual. Don't worry, Cam, sooner or later you'll meet my family. Then you'll understand."

Cam said, slightly wistfully, "I wish I had family like that."

Doc shook his head. "Maybe Shana's brothers, Cam. But you don't want family like her sister. Trust me." He and Snake Eyes shared a long look, remembering when Shana had been shot in the head by one of their enemies, a little while back. Siobhan had showed up demanding that Doc pull the plug on her life-support. Snake Eyes had responded by throwing Siobhan out of the room.

And thankfully, Doc had listened to Snake Eyes.

They rounded the corner and stepped into the gym, then crossed it to enter the workout room. After the incident where Walker had raped Cam in the 'Girlz Only' workout room the previous summer, Shana and Snake eyes had laboriously dismantled their dojo and moved everything to the workout room, then moved the 'Girlz Only' sign to the door of the former dojo. The result was that when Cam walked in, there wouldn't be any trace of uneasiness, no recollections or bad memories, and with the mats on the floor and swords decorating the walls of the former workout room, the room now looked completely different and had a different atmosphere than when Cam had been attacked in it.

Courtney, Allie, Olivia, and Alex were already there, waiting, and a chorus of cheerful hellos were exchanged all around as Cam sat down in a comfortable chair that had been brought for the purpose. They didn't say anything about Charlie being in a female only space, but he left as soon as he'd gotten her comfortable. She cooed over Auggie, looking slightly wistful as she stroked his fuzzy brown curls, and waited for Shana to signal their start.

In the dojo on the other side of the wall, Wayne, Dash, Clayton, Ettienne, Charlie and Snake Eyes were waiting, both of them sitting cross-legged on the floor and preparing to slip into a meditative trance. Dash was coordinating things on the men's side, and had a walkie-talkie so he could communicate with Allie, who was coordinating things on the women's side.

The idea was to see if snake Eyes and Shana, and Cam and Charlie, really had a way of seeing what the other was seeing. Dash had a deck of cards, Ettienne had a pad of paper; on the other side of the wall Allie had a deck of cards and Alex had the paper. Dash was going to show the cards to Snake eyes, recording which card was shown when, and in the women's room, Shana would tell Alex what card Snake Eyes was seeing. After Shana finished giving her answer, Allie would beep Dash's radio to signal them going onto the next card.

They would repeat the experiment with Charlie, then Allie would show Shana cards in the women's room and Snake Eyes would write which card Shana was seeing. Then Cam would take a turn. Then they'd all get together and compare the notes Ettienne had taken on what cards had been shown Charlie and Snake Eyes and what the girls had actually said; and Allie would compare the notes on what had been shown Cam and Shana.

It wasn't really an official experiment, and not something that could be recorded on an official record somewhere, but everyone knew that id this was reliable, it could give them an edge in situations when they were in separate groups. Duke, in fact, had already said that when the Joes went on their annual 'Team building' paintball war at a camp upstate this year he planned on having Snake eyes on his team because it would be absolutely impossible for Shana to hide from him—if Snake Eyes could see what Shana was seeing, they could find her easily.

"All right. We're ready here. Go, Dash," Allie spoke into her radio.

Dash held up a card in front of Snake Eyes; two of hearts. Moments later his radio beeped, and he picked up the next card; joker. Beep. Next card: ace. Beep. Next card: five of spades. Beep. Next card: king.

When Snake Eyes was done, Dash did a reshuffle and then started with Charlie. Queen. Four of spades. Two of diamonds. Joker. Six of hearts. When he was done he spoke into his radio. "All right, Allie, we're done. Your turn."

Moments later, Snake Eyes started writing down what cards he was seeing down his 'link' with Shana. Queen. Four of diamonds. Six of hearts. There were fifty-two numbers on his sheet of paper for each card in the deck. Some numbers he didn't write anything for; some he filled in without hesitation. When he was done, Charlie took his turn.

"All right, we're all done in here. If the girls can stand a little testosterone in their workout room, we'll come over there to keep Cam and Liv from having to get up and come here?"

There was laughter in Allie's voice. "We'll live with that testosterone. Come on over." The guys could hear The Girls giggling on Allie's end of the radio before she turned it off.

"It's been a long time since I've heard The Girls laughing at us guys," Dash said quietly as they waited for Charlie and Snake Eyes to get up off the floor and stretch out before they moved toward the door of the dojo. "I've missed hearing Allie laugh. She hasn't laughed since Thanksgiving."

"I missed having all of you," Clayton said quietly. 'It's good to have things back to normal."

"Speak for yourself," Doc admonished. "You're not the one with a screaming baby in his infirmary going off at all hours of the night."

"Doc, I told you if it's too much trouble we can transport Liv to Fort Hamilton and then have her sent to a regular hospital, either here on Staten island or out in Manhattan," Clayton told him. "I realize that having a baby here is a big inconvenience and a breach of security and I could be disciplined for it."

"Like any of us are going to tattle on you," Ettienne sad easily. "We like having the little guy around, he livens things up a bit."

"As soldiers, we're used to dealing death," Dash said. "It's not often we get to nurture life. Liv is one of us in every way that truly counts; she's been through hellfire with you, and so has a

Alex and there's not a single person on base who hasn't seen how much in love with Auggie Shana and Cam are. Doc says that Auggie is probably the best medicine for both Cam and Shana right now."

"It's true," Doc admitted as Clayton looked at him in astonishment. "Although Cam's not really up to anything strenuous, since she's patched things up with Shana her will to keep fighting for her recovery has returned. When Shana introduced her to Auggie I thought there'd be some hesitation at first, seeing as how Cam will never be able to have children, but she accepts that she can't, hasn't shown any envy to Liv, and Auggie will hush for her like he'll hush for no one else. Even his Mom or Shana. Between Liv, Shana, and Cam, Auggie's well-cared for, better than if we moved Liv to a regular hospital, and there's no reason we can't continue the status quo." And then, quieter, "I heard Alex telling Olivia that Damien Kennedy's trial is going to start in another week and Allie and Courtney are going to coordinate so that Alex, Shana and Cam can have some time to talk to the Federal Prosecutor, Abbie Carmichael, about their testimony. She told Liv she wants Liv to be available in case Cam needs to be reminded that she'll feel better after she testifies. After Kennedy's trial Cam will have a breather of a few weeks, and then they'll start Yu's trial—and the trial of the other twenty-five people Alex managed to track down who…took advantage…of a vulnerable young child in upstate New York."

"Twenty-five…Jesus." Clayton shook his head. "Is Cam physically and mentally and emotionally strong enough to handle having to tell courtrooms of complete strangers what those sons of bitches did to her twenty-five times?" Left unsaid was the words I doubt it.

"Alex believes she is. Cam insists that she has promised Alex she will testify and she is determined to keep her promises…as always. Now, the way she looked a week ago, I would have dug in my heels and thrown Alex out, if I had to—she wasn't in any shape to be testifying. But with the rift between her and Shana patched up, she's been making measurable progress and even Doc's surprised. So I'll sit back and wait to see how she is from day to day. She is my wife, I know how to read her. If I think she can't handle it I'll fight Alex myself." Charlie's words held a hint of implacability; he meant what he said.

Ettienne shrugged. "Do what you feel you need to. I'll admit Alex gets very single-minded sometimes. And she's felt very, very guilty about this whole affair and she's obsessed with getting everyone responsible. She's not uncaring about Cam's mental and emotional condition but her job is to look at the big picture not just one person and she gets single-minded sometimes trying to do what she feels is right. I'll let her know if she's pushing it, though. That's what The Girls have us for, after all." Chuckles rippled through the guys.

"Okay. Let's go see if this spiritual mumbo-jumbo worked," Clayton opened the dojo door.

"I can't believe this spiritual mumbo-jumbo worked!" was Clayton's first exclamation as he saw the results from the sheets of paper.

The list of cards that had been shown Charlie was identical to what Cam had told Alex she was seeing. The list of cards that had been shown Cam and that Charlie had said that he was seeing was also identical. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that there could have been any way for either Charlie or Cam to have known in advance what cards would be shown in what sequence—it had been a perfect blind test which both had passed with flying colors. What Charlie saw, Cam spoke. What Cam saw, Charlie spoke.

The lists from Shana and Snake Eyes were different, but still left them all scratching their heads. There were a few hesitations; there were spaces where Snake eyes hadn't written anything, unsure of what he was seeing; there were a few spaces where Shana hadn't written anything either. But out of fifty-two cards from a brand new deck, Shana's list matched Snake Eyes' thirty-five times, and Snake Eyes matched forty times. There were two errors on Shana's list; there were none on Snake Eyes'.

"There were a few times when I 'saw' something but wasn't sure of what I saw," Shana commented now, looking over Clayton's shoulder at the results. "And I hesitated to write. And over here," she pointed to one blank line, "Courtney sneezed and I lost my concentration."

"This does argue for the fact that you might have some sort of extrasensory perception between the two of you," Doc said in amazement. "I'm just trying to figure out how that could be possible—and why there's a hundred percent correlation in Charlie and Cam's, and why there's less in Snake Eyes and Shana's. You two have been together longer than Cam and Charlie have been."

"I'm a medicine woman of my tribe and Charlie is a medicine man of his. While our tribes may be different, many of the Native American spiritual beliefs are the same and training is also the same. So your answer would be that while Snake Eyes and Shana have been together longer and their bond has developed through association, Charlie and I were trained to do this. So you're really looking at the difference between raw talent and trained skill." Cam looked up at Shana. "If Shana would agree to let me teach her some of my Native American techniques, and Charlie could teach Snake eyes some of his, in a year's time our lists will be indistinguishable. Because the amount of correlation in two people not trained to do this is remarkable, and if they could train for this you'd have the one method of communication that would be absolutely unbeatable in a combat situation."

It was true, but the appreciative silence was for the fact that Cam sounded like her normal self and that was the most words she'd put together in a very long time. But she was still dressed in very loose clothes and she was still weak, and tired, and Clayton decided that was enough for the day. "Well, that's it for this test. Let's figure out how we can use this to our advantage, and in the meantime, I believe you girls had something else on the agenda for today?"

"We're planning Cam and Charlie's wedding," Courtney said enthusiastically. "I know it's just a formality but she's going to have to wear white, it's her first wedding, and—"

"I don't like white." Cam blinked.

"But you have to wear white—it's a traditional color for a wedding!" Courtney looked aghast. "You can't not wear white!" She looked pleadingly at Charlie. "Help me out here!"

Charlie grinned at Courtney. "I'm not getting in the middle of this. At our wedding in her village she wore traditional dress, and I wore Navajo traditional. I don't see why we can't wear that. Or why we can't just wear our uniforms."

"We girls don't get to dress up for our guys that often. You never get to see us as girls, you see us as soldiers. It's nice to dress up once in a while. Don't you want to see her dressed in something beautiful?"

"She is always beautiful to me, no matter what she wears," Charlie went to his wife's side, wrapped an arm around her thin shoulders, and leaned in to kiss her cheek. She brought one arm up to hug him back, her eyes bright with gratitude. Charlie whispered something in her ear, she whispered something back, and they hugged once more before Allie cleared her throat.

"While we're planning Cam's wedding, you guys are going to be moving Shana and Snake Eyes' stuff out of her quarters and into the larger double room next to Cam and Charlie's. They're engaged now, practically married, and I'm not going to make them wait until they are officially married before I put them in a room together. It would be a moot point anyway—they're both spending so much of their time already in Shana's room that it's only a formality."

"Where was I when this was decided?" Clayton declared in mock annoyance.

Allie widened her eyes in feigned innocence. "When you hired Shana you told her you'd leave it up to her to make any decisions concerning any of the girls. So since she's currently off duty, it falls to me, thereby making it my decision what I want to do. I checked the regs, there's nothing saying we can't move them in now, particularly since I don't see Snake Eyes waiting for Shana's family to make wedding arrangements. Heck, I don't see Shana waiting for her family to make those arrangements. We know what her family's like." Everyone nodded knowingly.

"I still don't see why you wouldn't want your family to make the arrangements. Why would you want to celebrate your wedding with us, instead of your family?"

Shana knelt in front of Cam's chair. "Cam, you guys are my family. In every way that counts. I love my Dad, my brothers, my Mom, and yes, I do love my sister even though she's a bitch…but you guys are my family, the family I choose, not the one I was born into. You have done more for me, sacrificed more for me, than my own sister has or ever would. So I choose to spend my wedding here, and not them." She sighed. "You'd understand if you met my mother and my sister. I'll have to introduce you sometime." She turned to the guys, waved a hand. "All right. Go ahead and move our things. We have girl things to discuss now." She looked up at them mischievously. "Unless you want to stay and listen."

The guys beat a hasty retreat.


	21. Chapter 82: Testimony

**Chapter 82: Testimony**

"It's been a really long time since we could have a girl chat like this," Allie sighed as the door closed behind the guys. "I love Dash, but I can't talk to him like I can with you. All of you," she added, although her eyes stayed on Shana, her first friend here at Joe base.

"I'll say. I love Wayne, but damn, he can be dense as a brick sometimes!" Courtney rolled her eyes, prompting a laugh from the others as they stretched themselves out on the padded mats, making themselves comfortable. Allie picked up the large picnic basket she'd hidden behind a chair and opened it, bringing out assorted sandwiches and bags of high-calorie goodies; potato chips, chocolates, lots of junk. Once everyone (even Cam) had a bag of chips, a sandwich, and a couple of chocolates from a bag of assorted candy, she sighed. "All right, let's get down to business. When are we going to have Cam's wedding?"

"I'd prefer to wait until after the trial," Cam said quietly. "Just to get that cleared and out of the way. I know after we get married we can go on a honeymoon—even though technically we've already been on one—but Alex said there will be a few weeks in between Kennedy's trial and Yu's trial, and I'd like to take that time to relax before…" she stopped; she didn't have to say anything else. The hardest part wasn't going to be Kennedy's trial, it would be Leo Yu, and all the people he'd sent to the upstate New York cabin to rape an innocent girl. And they could all see that having some down time between the two trials would be a good thing for Cam's state of mind.

"I'll second that." Shana waved a hand, then licked chocolate from her fingers. "Now, I say that Cam should wear whatever's most comfortable. If she wants to wear her tribal leathers, she should be able to."

Courtney rolled her eyes. "That's _so_ unromantic. The guys never get to see us dressed up, it's uniforms all the time. Cam, wouldn't you like to splurge, just once, on a dress that'll make Charlie's tongue hit the floor and his eyes roll into his head?"

Cam threw her head back and laughed, and everybody laughed with her. Amusement, tempered by happiness that she could laugh again; while they had all been worried about Shana, there had been no shortage of worry about Cam too. Not just what she'd gone through, but everyone knew that Doc was very, very worried indeed about her scarring and her loss of mobility, and her emotional recovery. "That's a charming picture. I have to admit that, just once, I'd like to wear something nice, something pretty." There was real wistfulness in her voice. "But even if you put peacock feathers on a sparrow it doesn't change the fact that the sparrow's still a sparrow and no amount of pretty packaging on the outside will change that. I've tried to be happy with who I am, not what I wanted to be, because, let's face it, I'm not pretty. I never will be. And now…after this…with the scars…I should just be content with the fact that I'm even still alive and that Charlie still loves me at all." She took a deep breath even as the other sobered, thinking about the fact that one shoulder was higher than the other because of her skin warping from the scars. "And there's very little out there that will hide how ugly I am."

"You're not ugly!" Shana snapped angrily. "God help you if Charlie ever hears you say that, Cam, because you're not and he knows you're not and there's not a single one of us who thinks so. You are one of the bravest and most beautiful people I have ever met, and you know what, just because you can't see that doesn't mean we can't show it to you. Girls, what do you say, when she gets a little better, we take her out shopping?" she held up ha and to stop Cam' s words. "You don't have to buy anything if you don't want to, but Courtney knows some—okay, a lot!—of really good dress shops and dress makers and hairdressers, and I'm sure that between all of them we could most certainly find something you like that will cover your scars but still make you beautiful."

"Absolutely," Courtney piped up firmly. "There's no shortage of people willing to help. You're active-duty military who went through something terrible in a combat situation and now you're trying to get married but you want to look good—seriously, there won't be a dry eye in any dress shop or beauty shop when I get done, and they'll turn themselves inside out trying to help you."

"Don't make any decisions now, Cam. Try to keep an open mind. If, after you see the best that the New York dress shops and beauty salons can do, you decide you'd still rather wear traditional Iroquois clothing in a traditional ceremony, well, that's your choice. Just give us a chance to show you what is possible before you close that door." Shana couldn't quite keep the pleading out of her voice.

Cam nodded finally, reluctantly. "I'm not pretty. Never have and never will be. But I'll give your way a try."

"You won't be disappointed!" Courtney got up from where she sat. "I'm going to do some checking on the Net, see if some of the best designers and stylists are going to be in New York anytime this month, and see what we have to do to get an appointment." She gave then a sweetly malicious smile. "I'm sure many of them will be more than happy to hear from the great Courtney Krieger." She grinned and disappeared out the workout room door.

"The 'great Courtney Krieger'?" Cam started after the blond tank jockey, looking bemused.

"Courtney used to be a famous runway model for many of the great fashion houses. As much as she hated that life and says she never wants to go back, she sure can talk about clothes and shoes and makeup and hair with the best of them. But if she says she can do it, Cam, she can. Don't doubt her."

"And speaking of doubt," Alex piped up from where she sat polishing off her roast beef sandwich, "Abbie needs to start trial prep with Shana and Cam this week, so the sooner you can get your testimonies and statements written, the better." She tuned to Shana. "You should probably show up in dress uniform. You'll look impressive right next to an impressive military record. Any medals you have that can be worn…openly…should be worn too."

"And Cam?" Shana asked. "She doesn't have a dress uniform—she was in training when Hawk met her and I think in the shuffle we may not have had the rest of her things sent up yet from Fort Benning. And right now her skin's too tender to wear the heavy fatigues for any length of time."

"She'll just have to wear regular clothes. I will admit I'm a little worried, because it'll look like she's not on duty, but it simply can't be helped."

"If it will help I will wear the fatigues," Cam said immediately. "If I wear a light shirt underneath it, they shouldn't rub too much."

"No." Shana disagreed. "Anything that makes you uncomfortable should be avoided right now, you don't need to stress your body out any further. I'll check the regs and see what's permitted." She actually had something different in mind, but she had to talk to General Hawk about it first. "I'm going to go do that now. I'll bring you the written testimony later. When do you need it?"

"Well…Abbie actually wanted me to bring both of you by her office tomorrow afternoon to go over the process of a trial with you both, so can you have it ready by tomorrow morning? Abbie really needed it a lot earlier than this but she understood neither of you were in any condition to try and deal with it."

"I'll have mine ready," Shana said immediately. "I'll do mine tonight. Cam, if you head back to your quarters now and take a nap I'll stop in as soon as I finish mine and help write yours." She saw the surprised look on everyone's faces and snorted. "Someone's going to have to write hers for her, she can't write with that arm." The right shoulder was the higher one, giving her the look of someone afflicted with scoliosis, and that shoulder was pulled farther back than the other one.

It was apparently something no one had thought of except Shana herself, and Allie looked stunned—and saddened. But she pulled herself together quickly. "Yes. Let's. Oh…Alex, Abbie's office is wheelchair accessible, isn't it? It'll take some of the strain off Cam if we can take her to the office in a chair so she won't have to exert herself walking so far." She ignored Cam's faint protests that she was perfectly all right and overrode her. "We can fit a folding wheelchair in the back of the Hummer and drop Shana, Cam, and you off at the courthouse, then we're going to go shopping for wedding presents. Just give us a call when you're done and we can come and get you."

"The perfect solution," Shana nodded. "All right. Cam, back to your quarters for a nap. I'll be by in a little bit. I need to check the rulebooks on uniform for you and then I'll write my testimony and come help you with yours." And when Shana got that command tone in her voice no one would gainsay her.

"General Hawk?"

Clayton looked up at the sound of the familiar voice and smiled as he sat back from his paperwork. "Still officially on vacation, but feel free to come on in," he said to Shana, and Shana promptly came in and scooted a hip up on the end of the desk that he usually kept clear for her. It was an old ritual, and something that felt familiar. "What's on your mind?"

Shana told him what Alex had told them about Abbie needing to prepare for trial. "So we're going to be off-base for most of tomorrow, all of us girls. They want to go shopping for Cam and Charlie's wedding presents, so the plan is to drop us off at the federal courthouse downtown, then come pick us up when we're done with Ms. Carmichael."

"Sounds good to me." Clayton nodded approbation, then said causally, "But you have something else on your mind."

"Alex said Abbie told us we should wear our dress uniforms for the trial. Cam's going to need a dress uniform—in all the fuss and the stuff that happened this summer we never did get the remainder of her things sent up from Fort Benning. I was thinking that communications specialist Mainframe's been seeing from Fort Hamilton might be about Cam's size and have one she could borrow, but Cam really should have a set of her own—"

"I'll call Fort Benning to have her things sent up. It might take a little while, so if Mainframe's friend is amenable to letting her borrow a set of Class B's, she'll be able to wear a dress uniform. Which would be easier on her still-healing skin than the heavy fatigues." His eyes acquired a mischievous twinkle. "Cam and Courtney are both, as you know, up for recognition—Courtney for promotion to Specialist, and I was planning on a Soldier's Medal for Cam. I think that new medal would look nice and impressive against those dress blues, give a civilian jury the right impression of her value to the US Army. I think I could arrange to do that before the trial starts." Clayton's eyes twinkled. "I think that solves your dilemma?"

"It…does." Shana's head was still spinning at the rapidity with which Clayton had made that leap of logic.

"Then consider it done. Go work on your testimony so you can get that done and help Cam with hers." Clayton made shooing motions toward the door. "Now go on, I have a mountain of paperwork to catch up on."

_…I do solemnly affirm that the foregoing is a true and concise statement of the events outlined in this document, which same are the affairs laid before the court for its consideration, so help me God._

Shana placed the period at the end of the sentence with exacting care, looked over the document once more, and nodded to herself. She'd had to walk a fine line between being descriptive enough to give everyone reading it a clear picture of what had happened to her, yet not make it graphic enough to sicken people.

There was one person who needed to read it that would be sick anyway, but that couldn't be helped. "Snake Eyes?" she said quietly, and at the sound of her voice, he left off puttering around the far end of the room where he was folding clothes and rearranging his drawers the way he liked it. It had felt strange, being in a new room after having spent her entire assignment at Joe base in her old one, but one look at the larger bed and a look at the two pillows side by side at the head of the bed had overcome the strangeness; she loved the idea of waking up next to him every morning, of him not having to sneak out of her quarters early in the morning to be back in his by wake-up at five-thirty.

"I'm going to go help Cam write her testimony, but while I'm doing that, I thought you might like to read mine. I know you know some of what happened through our bond," and that was something that she was still trying to digest, that they'd grown so close he could now be with her spiritually even when they couldn't be together physically, "…and I know Doc let you look at my medical file, but you haven't heard the whole story from me. We promised no more secrets, so…" She held out the sheaf of paper to him.

He took it carefully, as if it were fragile, then lifted his hands and signed to her, deliberate series of letters.

She frowned. "I don't understand."

_We promised no more secrets. I know about your classified training, and your medical and your testimony; you didn't even know my name. So._ He signed again.

"Seriously?" Shana blinked. "I…couldn't start calling you that. I think of you as Snake Eyes."

He leaned over, kissed her forehead as he sat down on the bed with the papers. _You can call me whatever you like. And…while you all are working on wedding arrangements, I'll be taking your last name, O'Hara. I'll go along with whatever else you decide, but on that point I'm firm. I'll be Mr. O'Hara._

"Seriously?" She said again, and when he nodded, she started to laugh. "Oh…oh, won't that be one in the eye of my Mom and Siobhan!" She was still chuckling as she headed for the door. "All right. Let me go help Cam with hers." She deliberately didn't mention that she was positive he'd need the privacy while he read it. And she also didn't see the need to mention that she'd be in the room next door—Cam and Charlie had the room right next to theirs, after all.

Snake Eyes sat down slowly on the bed as the door closed softly behind Shana. He never even noticed her leaving, lost as he was in her narrative. Now he understood why his first impressions of her captivity had been of darkness, of a heavy lassitude and weight on her limbs, interspersed with brief moments of lucid consciousness and blinding agony. For the first time he understood that Sandra, the bitch they'd first met in Amsterdam, had thought that he'd been her lover, had taken her spite out on Shana because she believed that Shana had stolen Snake Eyes from her. He read Shana's account of how she'd clarified that particular point, and felt his lips curve in a vindictive smile, imagining the look on the bitch's face when she found out about that particular piece of information.

And then the smile was wiped out, replaced by horror and anguish as he read how Sandra had gotten her revenge. In his mind's eye he could see Shana's body wracked with shudders from the drugs, saw her fighting the withdrawal for long enough to kill Sandra and try to escape. And he too felt the sickening pit in the bottom of his stomach open up as he read how she'd failed to escape, the brutal beating she'd taken from the guards for her attempt, and how she'd found herself chained down on the cargo ship.

She'd tried to fight, tried to resist; and although he was proud at her spirit, her fight, her refusal to give up, he could also see where her actions had made things harder for herself. But he kept reading, read about her wild joy when she'd seen Cam, felt her relief when they'd been sold together, her relief when they woke in the same place, although different cells. He felt her sick terror as she struggled to keep Cam alive after the disastrous dose of barbital drugs, and then struggled to keep down his dinner as he read of their treatment at the island, the few dazed memories Shana had of their brief escape, their time in the tidal cave, and their eventual recapture. And then, his heart in his stomach, he read Shana's account of what she'd been forced to do to Cam, that she'd been forced to hurt Cam to keep her alive because the barbed wire whip would have killed the younger woman. And here he read Shana's reflection that the worst scarring on Cam's back, the starting point for the keloid scars and the place where the scar tissue had pulled the tightest and deformed the shoulder, had been the place where the barbed wire had literally skinned Cam's back.

He finished reading, carefully laid the papers back on the desk, then lay back in the bed their new bed, big enough for both of them comfortably now—and switched off the light. In the darkness, he let tears stream unchecked and unashamed, down his cheeks. That his Shana should have gone through such unspeakable cruelty; that she'd had to watch her best friend go through so much too, and that both women had come through with their hearts, minds, and humor intact…he loved her for it, loved both of them, knew in his heart that while Shana seemed to have adopted Cam as a sort of surrogate sister, he too would have no problem considering Can his sister as well. She and Shana were two of the bravest, most beautiful women in the world.

And then his thoughts turned to Kennedy, and his fists clenched so hard his nails cut into his palms. He never even noticed, remembering Kennedy as he'd seen the son of a bitch on the island that afternoon. Impeccable white suit, unruffled, calm, the very image of evil masked by smiling banality. And…for some reason Snake Eyes felt like he'd seen the man before. He couldn't remember where, try as he might…but it didn't matter where he'd seen the man before, the only thing that mattered was that at some point, Snake Eyes was going to meet him again, and on that day only one of them was going to walk away alive.

And it sure wasn't going to be Kennedy.


	22. Chapter 83: Prosecution

**Chapter 83: Prosecution**

"I tried to pick the smoothest roads," Courtney said anxiously as Allie and Alex pulled the folding wheelchair out of the back of the Hummer and opened it. Shana held her hand out to Cam, and with Courtney and Shana's help, Cam got out of the Hummer and sank gratefully into the wheelchair.

Her face was tight with pain, but she finally opened one eye and smiled weakly. "I'm fine. I'm just not used to everything being such an effort."

Coming from someone who used to sail through a room on the tips of her toes, it was a heartbreaking comment. Allie turned away, busying herself with testing the brakes so that Cam wouldn't see the tears in her eyes, and Shana swallowed hard, then forced herself not to react. There would be a time and place for that, and it was not here, in the parking lot of the Manhattan Federal Courthouse building. Later, when all of this was over; now was not the time. Right now she had to be strong for Cam, and for herself, and for Snake Eyes, because she could sense he was as upset about all of this.

And herself? Oddly enough, when she'd picked up her testimony and slipped it into a folder next to Cam's that morning, upset wasn't the word for what she was feeling. Well, she was upset, but not in the same sick, anguished, tormented way she had for the last week. Right now, in fact, the best word to describe what she felt like was 'pissed'.

Yep. Pissed was accurate. Furious. Enraged. Not only on her behalf, but on Cam's too, because it was becoming quite clear to everyone who knew Cam that if she didn't get treatment for her scars to improve her appearance, functionality, and mobility, she would never dance again in quite the way she had formerly. It was also clear that there was going to be a very long road to full rehab to continue being an Army soldier; everything was an effort right now.

She was looking forward to testifying against Kennedy.

It was a warm day, and the interior of the courthouse felt cool against her skin. She was dressed in her fatigues, and so was Cam. Getting into them had been an effort for the younger woman, but except for her pallor and thinness, she looked every inch a soldier. The guards at the security desk who checked them in and made sure they weren't carrying weapons smiled at both of them, and didn't even make Cam stand so they could check her; they passed the wand over and around her, then gave all three of them back their wallets and nodded them through with a friendly smile.

Abbie smiled warmly and held her office door open for Shana to push Cam's wheelchair in, and Alex, bringing up the rear of the party, closed the door. "Thank you for coming," she said as she sat down behind her desk. "I realize this isn't easy, that both of you have been through a lot, and that this is going to be very, very hard for you, and I appreciate your willingness to do this."

"We have to," Cam said quietly. "Kennedy didn't just traffick us, he's had many other victims too. When he tried to drown me I saw the bodies in the water under the fishing platform on his private island. Knowing what we went through, I can't imagine what those other women went through and I'm doing this as much for them as I am for us. We survived—they didn't. I wonder how many victims he had that didn't survive him."

"Sixteen," Abbie said quietly. "The FBI has been very busy over the last few weeks since the two of you were pulled off that island. Dive teams went off that fishing platform that we saw in the drone video, pulled up all the bones that were down there and started trying to DNA match and analyze them. The FBI got a team of forensic anthropologists with one of the top museums in the country busy matching DNA from the bones to identify whole bodies, reconstructing faces from the skulls, and trying to give a face to the people who died in hopes that we can identify some of them and maybe find family to give the bones to for a burial. The head of that team, Dr. Temperance Brennan, is willing to testify during the trial if I feel necessary."

"Have you managed to find any victims families?" Cam asked softly.

For answer, Abbie pushed a folder across the table. "Here's eight of the reconstructions, already done. Victim number one has been identified as an Italian girl reported missing as a teenaged runaway from Milan four years ago, Maria Vespazi. Victims number five and six are two sisters, Shannon and Brigid, who were traveling with a group of foreign exchange students from Ireland to Norway when they went missing from the hotel. They were assumed to be runaways. Victim eight is a US woman who was on a vacation in Fiji with a boyfriend when she went missing; his story was that they were snorkeling over a reef when a rogue wave swept her out to sea but we now know that she somehow ended up on the island with Kennedy." Abbie sighed. "I wanted to talk to both of you about this before you heard about this from someone else. One of the victim's families, the family of the woman who was on vacation, wants to file a wrongful death lawsuit to obtain restitution from Kennedy."

"Money isn't going to bring their loved one back," Cam said.

"I know, but they are within their rights to do so, and I can't tell them what to do. What I want to know is whether the two living victims—you and Shana—would agree to file a lawsuit with them."

"Why would you think we'd want to? I don't want to see him again. I don't want to face him again, I want him to rot in jail for what he did to us and to the rest of the victims!" Cam said hotly.

"Because if you agree I'll file the suit for you under victims restitution laws and I'm asking for three million for each of you." Cam's mouth hung open at that piece of news, but Abbie didn't bat an eyelash. "Yes. Three million for each of you, for pain and suffering, for the medical expenses, for counseling and aftercare. I saw your medical file, you signed a waiver for the doctor on your base to share it with legal personnel and I know what your physical condition is like. I saw the scarring, and you're sitting in front of me right now and I can see that you still have a long way to go. I want him to pay for that. I want him to pay for what he's done to both of you. Not just with his freedom, but I also want him to pay with his money. He's not going to need it where he's going—I'm from Texas originally and I would love to give him the death penalty for what he's done, but if I can't get that, he'll at least be in prison for the rest of his life, what good is all his billions going to do him?"

"He paid two hundred and fifty thousand for both of us at the slave market." Shana said very quietly.

"Do you know how much he paid for that island you two were held on?" Alex spoke for the first time, blue eyes glacial with anger. Not at them; at Kennedy. "Six million for the 27 acres and the villager's huts on it. That mansion that was the main residence—he built that himself. And the solar facility. And then he kept an office in Amsterdam, and that's valued at a million and a half. And I'm talking US dollars here, not euros. And there's also his home in Atlanta, Georgia—that particular bit of land is almost a million and a half."

"He told me…I wasn't one of those Atlanta society girls, so I shouldn't think I had the same rights," Shana said softly. "If he's indeed from Atlanta high society, then he'll know my family."

Abbie leaned forward, and her dark brown eyes glittered with suppressed merriment. "Seriously? Do you think he'd have ever met your family before?"

Shana shrugged. "I may have even met him before, and I just don't remember. I didn't really pay a lot of attention to the people my mother and sister tried to introduce me to at all those high society parties, the people my mother tried to marry me off to—they never interested me." She shrugged again. "I can try to find out. Do you think it would shock him if he found that out?"

Abbie nodded. "It would. It'll throw him off balance and that's what I want to do. I've spoken to him a couple of times so far, and it's like you two aren't even human in his mind. He refers to both of you in the most derogatory terms, like things to be played with, dolls that he doesn't care if he breaks."

"He doesn't. They don't." Cam said. "These people, the kind of people who would pay money to buy, and own, another human being—they don't see us as human. We _are_ just dolls. No, less than that—disposable things, things to be used up and thrown away. Shana was only valuable insofar as they thought they could resell her. And I…I was already damaged anyway. Worthless. If the people who had Shana hadn't needed a meat slave and picked me, I would have been loaded on a ship as unsaleable goods and disposed of—dumped over the side of a boat as soon as it got to water deep enough and far enough that the bodies wouldn't wash up on shore. It was just pure, dumb luck that I found Shana and we managed to get out."

"No," Abbie and Alex said together, but it was Abbie who leaned forward to look Cam straight in the eyes. "I refuse to believe in luck. I don't know what religion you are, what faith system you believe in, but I refuse to believe that you weren't meant to make it through this, that Someone somewhere didn't intend for you to make it. It was too much of a coincidence, that everything happened the way it did and went exactly as planned to bring both of you home. No, I believe you two were meant to survive, meant to come home, and meant to expose this bastard and what he's done. I don't believe any of this was chance, not a single bit."

Cam looked at Abbie for a long moment, gaze steady; Abbie looked back, and finally Cam said quietly. "When I came back I didn't want to testify. I didn't want to do this. The only reason I agreed to was because before I left I promised Alex that in exchange for her cutting Leo Yu a deal so Allie and Conrad could slip me into the Amsterdam market, I would testify. I came very close to breaking that promise, but I won't now. Thank you for reminding me why I have to do this."

Alex laid a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Cam. I know it looks like I'm forcing you, but believe me, you'll feel better after you face him and testify. It may not feel like it from this end of time, but after it's all over you'll be glad you did."

Abbie reached across her desk, grabbed a small square of paper—a business card. '"I don't know if you want to give this a try, but there's a Human Trafficking survivors group that meets over at Bellevue a couple nights a week. Registration isn't compulsory, it's not mandatory, and if you really don't want to I'll understand completely, but I just wanted you to know it was there. It's a group of women victims of human trafficking, and maybe it'll help both of you if you go. Just sit, listen to their stories, you don't have to participate if you don't want to, but it might help the two of you feel like you aren't alone. Alex has been going there to talk to torture survivors of the rogue militia factions on the African continent."

Alex nodded. "It's helped. And I think this survivors group would help you too."

"How did it go?" Allie couldn't hide her concern as she got out of the side of the Hummer to fold up Cam's wheelchair as Courtney and Shana helped Cam climb into the vehicle.

Just that little bit of effort left Cam breathing heavily, and Allie refrained from asking again until Cam caught her breath, wincing at the slight rasping sound from the younger woman's lungs. It was Shana who answered her. "It went all right. Abbie was very understanding, she took our testimonies, but because the two of us are military, Cam's intimately acquainted with legal proceedings—I take it Alex informed her that Cam went through a couple of courts-martial this summer also as a plaintiff—so while normally these pre-trial interviews are used by prosecutors to acquaint plaintiffs with court procedure and legal matters, in our case we know all this stuff and she says she has no doubt we'll do fine."

"Where is Alex?" Allie looked around for the blond lawyer.

"She said something about needing to go to the apartment and check on stuff. I gathered she'd get there on public transportation and then have Ettienne come pick her up later in her Mustang—I know Ettienne is just looking for excuses to drive that car. He loves it as much as she does—almost as much as Courtney loves it." They grinned as they looked at the blond tank jockey.

"There's nothing wrong with loving a fine piece of machinery like that," Courtney tossed her blond head. "Now stop making fun of me and drive. I don't want to be late for this appointment—she's a great designer but if I remember correctly she had absolutely NO patience with models who were late. We always had to be on time to dress for her shows."

"Where are we going?" Cam asked.

Courtney just grinned. "Wait and see."

When the Hummer finally stopped Cam stared out the window. "Courtney. Goddess, I can't go in there!"

'There' was one of the high-end fashion houses that catered to the ultra rich of Manhattan's elite. There was an absolutely beautiful dress in the window that Cam didn't even want to look at because she knew it was probably the equivalent of what the people in her village made in an entire year.

"Sure you can. In fact, I'm not giving you a choice." Allie was already getting the wheelchair out, and Shana was grabbing Cam's hand, gently but firmly, and tugging her out of the Hummer.

The woman who greeted them inside the store was someone Cam recognized from the front of grocery store checkstand magazines, and she stared, tongue-tied and in awe. The woman smiled at her, then looked at Courtney. "And this is the young lady you were telling me about?"

"Corporal Cameron Arlington. Ranger, out of Fort Benning, Georgia. She's active-duty serving military, just came back from a POW situation. Her physical condition is delicate, but she has a fiance who is passionately in love with her and they are going to get married. Problem is that she doesn't think she looks good in anything, and she's also self-conscious about her scars."

"Tch." The woman made a dismissive sound with her tongue. "Every woman is beautiful. Beauty is not skin deep, my dear," she said to Cam, "And while you may find it surprising to hear from someone who deals in beauty, not all of my girls are naturally beautiful. It takes a lot of work to make a pretty girl beautiful."

"But…I'm not even pretty."

The woman crouched in front of Cam's wheelchair, taking Cam's chin in her hand and turning Cam's face first one way, then the other, looking at her. "You have beautiful skin," she said firmly. "Clear and unblemished, and that beautiful honey-cinnamon color will look perfect with some of the new cosmetics I want to put on you. First, let's do something about your hair." She clapped her hands, and three women came running up. She gave whispered instructions to each one, then indicated the far corner of the room where there was a sink with a towel and what was plainly hair-washing apparatus around it. Courtney, Allie, and Shana sat down on nearby chairs and watched expectantly.

Another woman, under the boutique owner's expert direction, washed Cam's hair and dried it, praising it the whole time. "Such marvelous hair, no, beautiful. It is beautiful. So long, so thick, the color, it is like blue-black night! Madame, perhaps rhinestone pins to look like stars on black velvet?"

"Let's see what dresses we'll put on her. No, no, Jeanette, not the yellow, her skin will look like wilted daffodils next to the saffron. Natural tones, earth tones, warm honey, chocolate, gold. Ah, yes." She turned to Cam. "Come now, let's try this on."

It was a lovely dress, but the soft gold was still a strong color for Cam's cinnamon skin, leaving her looking like she'd gotten too dark of a tan. The designer shook her head. "Look for something in a champagne color."

The next dress the girl walked out with didn't look too fancy. An a-line with a trumpet skirt, form fitting around the hips flowing out to a wide bell shape from just above the knee to the floor, and the back was just a tiny bit longer than the front, giving her a slight train. The top of the dress was accented with a 'jacket' of champagne lace, with golden-brown flowers accenting the sheer sleeves, neckline, bust, and back, with a row of matching buttons going up the back.

But when Allie saw Cam's look, she nudged Shana. Shana nudged Courtney. And all three women smiled. Cam looked like Cinderella presented with the dress of her dreams; she couldn't stop staring, couldn't get a word out as the boutique owner helped her into the dress, being careful to settle the straps over the scars on shoulders and back, then eased the soft, lacy jacket's sleeves up over her arms in front, then buttoned it up the back.

"Do you like it?" Shana said as she stood up.

"It's beautiful," Cam breathed, and there was a shining light in her eyes Shana had never seen before. "It's so beautiful. But I can't, it's…the dress is beautiful and I'm sure I look terrible in it, I'm a sparrow dressed in peacock feathers."

"Sit down," the boutique owner said before Cam could turn fully to look into the full-length mirror behind her, and Cam sat obediently. The woman applied makeup to Cam's face; light powder, strokes of color on her eyelids, rosy blush on her coppery cheeks, a little eyeliner to subtly highlight her eyes, then she stood Cam up and turned her around. "Now look."

Cam stared at herself. Her hands came up to touch her cheeks, as if not quite believing that this could be her. "I…this can't be me. This can't be real. I'm…I'm not that pretty!" Her eyes were accented with eyeliner, their deep brown enhanced by golden shadow on her lids and a generous sprinkling of rose-gold blush on her cheeks and nose.

Courtney turned smugly to the boutique owner. "She'll take the dress. And whatever cosmetics you used on her face."


	23. Chapter 84: Connections

**Chapter 84: Connections**

Snake Eyes wasn't in their room when Shana came back with her dress.

She hung it in the closet, then closed it and stood for a moment, wondering where he was…and then a slow smile spread over her face and she closed her eyes, concentrating, reaching into herself to find that thin, bright thread that connected him to her. And saw, in her mind's eye, the dojo.

She quickly changed out of her fatigues and into workout clothes. She'd worn them partly because the case required it, and partly because she hadn't wanted anyone to see the scars on her arms. Although Doc had done a couple of collagen injections so that the indentations of the scars in her skin would fill out and not be as obvious, the red marks were still there. She tried not to feel self-conscious about them—compared to Cam's scars, she'd gotten off relatively easy—but she still felt the need to cover them up.

But not here on base. On base she could just be herself.

She jogged lightly to the gym. Duke was there with Stalker, both of them deep in conversation, but they nodded to her as she passed through on her way into the dojo. She slipped in and closed the door behind her…then turned the lock on the door, signaling that they wanted privacy.

Snake Eyes was attacking a new practice dummy with his swords. Not just practicing, attacking. Sweat stood out on his arms and shoulders, his muscles were bunched and so tight her own muscles hurt in response, and she couldn't imagine what thoughts were running through his mind to make his face look like a storm was brewing.

She took her new sword off the wall, drew it and laid the saya down to one side, and faced him on the mat. He looked at her, the cloaked rage fading into a puzzled, 'are you sure you're ready for this?' look, and she nodded. Over the last two weeks, since she'd started talking again, she'd been spending time in the dojo with him; first easy workouts to build her wind and her stamina back up, and then drills to build muscle and coordination. This would be the first time she'd face him across the mat in a bout since she'd come back.

He was pissed about something, she knew that the moment they started, but even angry he was taking it easy on her, which meant, to her, that he wasn't angry with her, it must be something else. So she started easy too, light clashes, circle, parry, another clash. She gradually escalated the bout as she warmed up, loosened, became more confident that her body remembered the moves, and he, surprised out of his bad mood by her deliberately harder hits, stepped up his own intensity until they were fighting the way they used to, not quite a pitched battle, but close to it, until she finally felt a twinge in her arm muscle and stepped back, signaling the end of the match. He stepped back too, and as she bent to pick up the saya, she noticed her arms were shaking from the strain of the workout. Just a little. She was going to be sore later—but then, so was he—he wasn't as thin as she was, hadn't lost as much muscle as she had while she was gone, but he hadn't worked out, hadn't stayed in shape, and he had a little training to do before he was back to full fighting form too.

"Okay, let's have it out. What's gotten you so upset today?" He looked at her, startled, and she rolled her eyes. "Snake Eyes. You were so distracted by whatever's going through your head you barely even noticed when I walked in." She hung her sword back on the wall, hands on her hips. "So spill it."

For a moment she thought he was going to refuse to answer her, so she stepped closer to him, took his hands in her own, lacing her fingers with his. "Snake Eyes. Remember our promise. No more secrets."

He hesitated for one moment more, then walked over to the small cabinet that held some of their smaller weapons and took a…photograph?...off the top, then handed it to her.

She leaned against the wall as her legs wobbled, and he was instantly beside her as she stared at the photo in shock. "I kept thinking I'd seen him somewhere, that I'd met him before. I couldn't think where."

It was a photograph, and not one that he'd taken of her. This was a photograph from her personal albums (which of course were open to Snake Eyes too, he enjoyed seeing pictures of her when she was younger.) This had actually been taken by Conrad, at some mind-numbing Atlanta social function she'd attended with him back when they were both posted to Fort Benning, years before she'd met Snake Eyes—actually, to be entirely frank, they'd both had a weekend pass from Fort Benning and her mother had this function that she insisted Shana attend as a representative of the Atlanta O'Haras. Shana, horrified at the prospect of being forced to attend one of these things by herself so her mother could parade her in front of every eligible bachelor there like a prize mare looking for a stud, had wrangled Conrad into coming with her (the first and only time Conrad Hauser had ever attended a function with her that involved her family). He'd spent most of the evening in a strained silence as Siobhan batted her eyes and flirted outrageously with him while making pointed, scathing comments about Shana; her dress, her manners, her attitude. That one evening had been enough for Conrad to know he hated her sister and he never again agreed to attend any other functions with Shana that involved her family.

But he'd taken a camera with him, and had taken pictures. Shana had been wearing a low-cut strapless dress that showed an outstanding amount of cleavage, and Conrad did what any other red-blooded male would have done; he'd captured as many pictures of Shana in that dress as he could. And this picture that Shana was holding now, that Snake Eyes had dug from who knew where, showed Shana holding a champagne glass, almost doubled over in laughter at something funny that someone had said, showing an impressive amount of cleavage…which the guy sitting in a wheelchair next to her in an impeccably-tailored white suit seemed to be taking slight interest in.

And that, of course, was Damien Kennedy.

"Conrad took that picture. I remember it now," Shana sat down, hard, and Snake eyes sat down with her. "Mom came over and grabbed me, said there was someone I had to meet, and Siobhan came over and she said that she'd been trying to snare him all evening but he didn't seem interested in her. And Mom told me to be on my best behavior, he had tons of money and would be a 'real catch'." She looked at Snake Eyes. "How did you know? I almost forgot about this picture."

_When Conrad and Charlie helped me move both our things from your old room to this one, I started taking down all the pictures I taped up so I could bring them here. At the time I just pulled them down and threw them into a box to sort out later and put them back in our photo albums, but while you were out meeting that prosecutor this morning I started trying to sort them and put them away and I saw this one._

Shana frowned, but she was thinking. "I'm going to go call home," she said abruptly, pushing herself off the wall and standing. "I want to ask Mom exactly what kind of relationship we have with Kennedy. And his family, if he has any."

Snake Eyes put a hand on her arm, stopping her from hurrying off. As she turned to look at him, a question in her eyes, he took out a small paper envelope from his pocket. _Hold out your hand._

She did, curious, and a moment later a brand new set of dog tags dropped into it, the metal disks stamped with her name, her service number, her blood type and her faith. "Oh. Oh, Snake Eyes." She swallowed hard. "Sandra took my old dog tags back in the Congo—I haven't even thought about them, hadn't even gotten around to replacing them yet." She slipped the bead chain over her head, felt the tags settle on her chest, the metal cool against her skin, the rubber silencers around the edges of each tag warming instantly. "Thank you, Snake Eyes." She gave him a quick kiss, then leaned in for a slightly longer one. When their lips parted again, her voice was slightly husky. "I'll thank you properly later this evening when we go to bed," she said with a smile that promised heaven; his groin tightened in response. "Right now, let me go call home." And she was gone.

It took an effort for Snake Eyes not to lick his lips; he was suddenly looking forward to the evening. But he took the empty box, stepped back to the cabinet, and reached under it. He'd kept Shana's old dog tags, the ones that Sandra had taken back in the Congo; dented, battered, beat up as they were, he'd clung to them while she was gone because he hadn't known if she was ever coming back. Now that he had her back, he was still determined to keep them anyway as a reminder to him of what he'd felt when she was gone, a reminder that life was too short and every moment with her was precious. He gently placed the battered dog tags into the box, and slipped it back into the cabinet. Not that he was keeping it a secret, but he didn't want her to see them and possibly get upset.

He picked up his sword , but his concentration in the workout was gone; all he could think about now was her promise for that evening. Finally he sighed, put the sword up for the day, and went to take a cold shower.

"O'Hara residence."

Shana rolled her eyes on the other end of the phone. Why, oh why, did it have to be her sister who answered the phone this time? Why in God's name couldn't it have been someone else? While Siobhan and her mother would have been the best sources of information about whatever relationship the O'Haras might have had with Kennedy, Shana could guarantee that her mother would keep quiet about the reason why Shana was asking. With Siobhan…the only thing bigger than her sister's mouth was her ego. Barely.

"Hi, Siobhan."

"What, not happy to speak to your own sister? You really should try to at least sound a little more enthusiastic, Shana, why, anyone listening to you would think you didn't care about us!" And in the same breath, Siobhan added, "Well, you don't call or write often enough as it is, so you probably don't."

Shana bit her lip on the indignant "I do so!" For some reason, being around Siobhan tended to make Shana feel like she was regressing in age; she always felt coltish, awkward, and inferior next to Siobhan. "Is Mom around?" she asked instead, deciding to bypass Siobhan altogether. "I wanted to ask her about Damien Kennedy."

"Oh, so you finally crawled out from under the rock you live under to pay some attention to what's going on?" Siobhan didn't even bother answering Shana's question about their mother's whereabouts. "I'm not surprised that even you finally heard about it, I mean, the whole thing was simply awful!" Before Shana could say anything else, Siobhan prattled blithely, "Some ghetto money-grubbing soldier just out trying to make a quick buck off poor Damien. I knew as soon as I saw the news that it wasn't true! It couldn't be, he's the nicest, kindest person, you know, you've met him before at the Governor's Ball in Atlanta a few years back. Mom was trying to get him interested in you, he's one of the most eligible bachelors in Atlanta. And now he's being railroaded!"

Shana couldn't think of a single thing to say.

Siobhan more than made up for it. "I mean, it's perfectly obvious, even his lawyer says it is. He just owned the island; he's far too busy to spend any significant time on it, and of course he's absolutely not the type to keep a woman as a...a sex slave…! I mean, all he has to do is snap his fingers and there's any number of women who would have fallen over themselves to jump in bed with him! If I weren't married, I would have. It's simply shocking, that whoever this soldier is would think to accuse someone like him. I can't wait until all the facts come out in trial and those soldiers are exposed as liars! They should do jail time after it's been proved they lied!"

Shana's temper rose, hot and furious, and before she stopped to think about what she was saying, she snapped, "I'm that soldier, Siobhan!"

Silence on the other end of the phone. Shana regretted what she'd said but she couldn't stop the words pouring out of her, the indignation that Siobhan would think Kennedy was being railroaded. "He's a scum-sucking son of a bitch, Siobhan, he had me and one of my friends here captive on the island and he did unimaginable things to us! Cam—my friend—barely survived it and she might be permanently crippled and I do _not_ want to hear you defend that—that—" She clamped her lips shut on the rest of what she'd been about to say.

Siobhan sounded—well, almost meek—when she next spoke, and Shana regretted her hasty temper. "I didn't know it was you, Shan, honest, I didn't. The press has been really, really quiet about who it was, they only said it was a couple of Army soldiers and they wouldn't release names or any details. What happened? How did you get to the island from wherever your base is?"

"We were on a humanitarian mission in the Congo when I was captured by members of one of the rogue militia factions. They drugged me and sold me to human traffickers, who took me to Amsterdam. One of my close friends here, Cameron Arlington, has previous experience with human trafficking and she volunteered to go deep cover with an implanted tracer chip to find me, and then my commander here located us using that tracker. He went in with a team of Navy troopers and FBI personnel and they got both of us and brought us back."

"What did he do to you?" Siobhan sounded concerned—and _that _was what kept Shana from blurting out the rest of the story. Siobhan was _never _concerned about her baby sister; in fact, she was never concerned with anything that didn't affect Siobhan directly. That was the kind of self-centered bitch her sister was. If she sounded concerned, it was because there was something in it for her.

"I can't give you any more details, Siobhan, I shouldn't even have told you as much as I did. I can't tell you anything more, but it'll come out at the trial, so just wait. And please keep it a secret, okay?" Shana waited anxiously for Siobhan's okay.

"Sure. I won't say anything."

"Siobhan. Seriously, I mean it. You can't say anything to anyone outside the family. Promise!"

"Shana, I got it, okay? Don't worry." Siobhan sounded sincere. "So um, if your friend barely survived it, are you…okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay. Look, I gotta go," mess bell was about to ring, and she was hungry after their morning, even though they'd all stopped for burgers after they got done at the dress shop. It had actually been more for Cam's sake than theirs, but they'd been gratified to see that she seemed in good spirits and had eaten well, and Shana had eaten too but she was now hungry again. "I'll call in a couple of days, okay? Tell Dad and Mom I'll call before the trial starts. And give our brothers my love."

"Okay, fine. Good night, Shan." Siobhan sounded distracted, and Shana had a faint sense of unease, but as she hung up the phone and got up from the base's communications station, she put that aside as she thought about the evening.

She met Snake Eyes just outside the mess—and it was the strangest thing, she knew he was walking toward the mess and got to the corner just as he got there. They'd gotten so much closer since she'd come back, that she was sure she could find him anywhere on base with her eyes closed. Maybe they could try that as an experiment? That could be interesting.

Mess was like she'd never left; with Snake Eyes next to her, she went through the line, indicating what she wanted added to her tray (and getting double helpings of high-protein foods because that was what Doc had prescribed) and pointing out what Snake Eyes wanted, then, trays in hand, they headed for their usual table—with Cam and Charlie. Cam was spending more time upright, and while walking any distance was a chore, she didn't seem to mind the effort she had to put in just to get to the mess hall. The camaraderie around her as she ate with them, talked with them, laughed with them, seemed to work wonders on her spirits, and Charlie had told Shana and Snake Eyes privately that if she went to sleep relaxed, nightmares didn't hit her as hard.

Shana and Snake Eyes walked Cam and Charlie back to their rooms (well, they did have rooms right next to each other now) and as they did, she told them about their discovery that Shana and Kennedy had met before, but that he obviously hadn't remembered. "You should give that picture to Abbie," Cam said as they paused for her to catch her breath. "Remember Kennedy telling you that you weren't one of those 'Atlanta society girls' and didn't have the same rights?" she grinned faintly. "He'll have a heart attack when he finds out you are one of those 'society girls'."

"Yes he will, won't he?" Shana grinned.


	24. Chapter 85: Family

**Chapter 85: Family**

Shana woke up first, smiling at the gentle buzz saw of Snake Eyes snoring next to her. _It's so wonderful to be able to wake up next to him. I want to wake up next to him every morning for the rest of my life. _The thought gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling. _I love this man so much…I do want to marry him._

She rolled over, looked at him. _I don't really want to wait. I'd love to do it now, but I haven't even told my family that we're engaged yet. Mom and Siobhan won't care, but Dad and my brothers will. They like Snake Eyes. You know, they'd probably like Cam and Charlie too, I'm going to invite Charlie and Cam to the wedding. And Allie and Dash and Courtney and Wayne and Clayton and Liv. And Ettienne and Alex. And Conrad. Poor Conrad. He'll come if I ask him, but he'll spend the whole time hiding from Siobhan. She really made an impression on him…and not a nice one. Although, in point of fact, none of my friends like my sister. Al least, though, she'll be civil to Clayton, Allie, and Dash. Just because they come from old money. Well, I could say Cam comes from an old family, too, since she's Native American and they've been here longer than even the O'Haras._

She smiled as she thought of the dress in the closet. She'd forbidden Snake Eyes from seeing it until the day of Cam's wedding; as Joe base was right under the Fort Wadsworth Chaplain's school, they didn't have far to go, and they had found procedures online for a non-denominational wedding. Not that either Charlie or Cam really cared; in their eyes, they were already married, heart and soul, so all of this was just a formality, a nod to the legal ramifications.

_Apparently Allie felt the same way since she pushed through getting these quarters through for us,_ Shana thought, then yawned. When she opened her eyes, she saw Snake Eyes' amused blue ones looking back at her. And she grinned. "Like what you see?"

_Absolutely. That mouth was doing some incredible things last night._

She gasped in a breath and then broke into helpless laughter, even as she marveled at it. She'd been so sure, while it was happening, that after Kennedy she would never want to make love again ever, but somehow it was different with Snake Eyes. She couldn't imagine any other man ever touching her again, but she loved the sounds he made when she used her mouth and hands on him, loved seeing him writhe with pleasure, hungered for the feel of his strong hands sliding against her skin, craved the feel of him inside her, and while she knew some of that craving was because of the Oxytocin still in her system (Doc had said it would take a few months to level off) most of it was because she really did want him. And he was more than willing to satisfy that particular hunger. 'Screwing like rabbits,' Courtney had called it once, and while Shana deplored the crudity of the term, she'd seen rabbits in spring up at their cabin in the Sierra Nevadas and had to admit that when she and Snake Eyes got really into what they were doing, they could look just as single-minded.

But they had a lot more fun than the rabbits did.

"Well, this mouth would like to get some food in it." She'd recovered her appetite and it seemed lately that all she did was eat. But she was gaining the body fat back, which was good; you had to have the fat before it could turn into muscle.

He opened his mouth to answer, but his stomach beat him to it, growling so loud that even Shana heard it. She chuckled as she got out of bed and reached for her clothes, draped carelessly over a nearby chair. "All right. Let's go."

Normally there was a lot of chatter coming from the mess hall; Shana knew something was wrong this time when they got close to the mess hall door and there was silence coming from inside. And when she appeared in the door, every eye turned to her, nervously, furtively.

She never even noticed.

Her attention was riveted by the large TV screens in the corners of the hall. Clayton had had them installed there a long time ago, partly just to provide background while his soldiers ate, but also to keep the informed of news. Those televisions were set to news channels right now, and one each of the two screens a broad red ribbon of color streamed by across the bottom of the screen with the Headlines 'Breaking News—Identity of Two Soldiers in Kennedy Human Trafficking Case Leaked'.

Cam was sitting in her wheelchair at the edge of one table. And she turned a stricken face to her friend. "Shana…who would do this?"

Shana didn't have to ask; she knew. "That bitch," she swore, her green eyes hard and cold, her voice angry as she looked at the red-haired, all-too-familiar woman on the TV screen talking to a reporter. "That absolute stone-cold hard-hearted bitch!"

"Who is it?" Cam asked.

Shana's fist clenched. "It's my sister Siobhan."

Alex stood from the table she was sitting at. "Shana?" it was an unspoken request for a private conversation, and Shana followed Alex out into the hall.

"What happened? How did your sister find out about all of this?"

Shana forced herself to breathe deeply, throttling down the impulsive anger that made her want to go find her sister and strangle her, fought down the shame and guilt that now the case could be compromised because of this. "Snake Eyes and I kept thinking we'd seen Kennedy before, but couldn't remember where. It wasn't until he was going through some old photographs yesterday and found a photo from years back when I went to the Governor's Ball with Conrad back when we were both stationed at Fort Benning. Kennedy and I met there and I didn't remember. And neither did he, because on the island he told me I wasn't one of those 'Atlanta society girls'. After I saw the picture I called home, intending to talk to my Mom and get some information from her as to how we knew Kennedy and what she knew about him, but my sister Siobhan answered the phone. She said that all Kennedy would have to do was snap his fingers and women would jump into his bed willingly so he didn't need to have sex slaves, and the soldiers who were bringing the accusations should be jailed 'when it was proved that the soldiers were lying.' And I lost my temper—I know I shouldn't have but my sister and I have a…prickly relationship…and somehow she can get me to lose my temper like few other people can."

"What exactly did you tell her?"

Shana had to close her eyes and think hard about the conversation of the day before. "I told her I was on a humanitarian mission in the Congo when I was captured by members of one of the rogue militia factions. I told her…I told her they drugged me and sold me to human traffickers, who took me to Amsterdam. I told her that Cam—I gave Siobhan her name, damn it—had previous experience with human trafficking and she volunteered to go deep cover with an implanted tracer chip to find me, and that the Army sent out a team of Navy troopers, FBI and Homeland security personnel to bring us home." She looked anxiously at Alex. "Have I damaged the case?"

"I'll have to talk to Abbie later, but I don't think you damaged the case. The case against Kennedy is practically airtight; between your medical reports, testimony from the naval troopers who were there rescuing you, and Conrad's testimony—yes, he submitted one too, as the leader of the field operation that went out to bring the two of you back, Allie's testimony as to what she and Conrad saw at the slave markets, the audio from Cam's tracer, and footage from the security cameras all over the mansion and the island that show you and Cam being tortured and raped—yes, the sick bastard had a lot of it taped—I really don't see that he'll be able to skate on the charges. What I am worried about now is what they'll be able to dig upon you and Cam before the trial, what kind of contamination of the jury pool will be happening, how the defense is going to use Cam's prior history to muddy the waters."

"What do you mean, prior history?" Shana felt anger rise again, this time on Cam's behalf. "She's done absolutely nothing wrong!"

"Shana look at this from the viewpoint of someone who is looking for excuses, okay? Cam was abandoned as an infant, her father had to adopt her because there was no evidence to prove she was his. He died while she was still very young and she was sent to live with her aunt and uncle in New York She says herself she was shy and a bit of a loner. A teacher had to take a lunch separately to make sure she was supervised during the school lunch."

"But that was so that Cam could dance in the gym, it wasn't because she was doing anything wrong!"

"The defense isn't going to look at it like that, Shana. They're going to do whatever they can to smear her name and reputation, pick out negative points while ignoring the reasons for them. They may also dig up the allegations the school made on her behalf about the child abuse John investigated, that CPS ruled unfounded because Cam was too afraid to talk, then the accident that broke both her legs. During the course of this the fire at the cabin is going to come out, and the fact that she never reported it or said anything will be ammunition, as will her later record of imprisonment at Sealview and her assaulting a guard there, her tangle with Immigration at the Otero County deportation camp, and Miramar—the fact that she was undergoing PTSD counseling at Miramar while she was incarcerated is also going to be a sticking point, with all the attention being given lately to soldiers who have 'gone postal' with PTSD symptoms, either treated or untreated. Then you take into account that she was previously a victim of sex trafficking, and that she volunteered to get you out…the defense will argue that she might somewhere subconsciously enjoy being told what to do—she's chosen a military career, after all…and will imply that she 'asked for it' especially in light of the military courts-martial records where Walker and Broadview and Hilton were accused of assault and battery and maltreatment."

"That's ridiculous."

"Shana, I know that and you know that but what matters is what a jury thinks, and there's enough in Cam's prior history to cast reasonable doubt on her mental state and her motives. I'm just glad I have you as a witness along with her, because to the public you're a much more believable witness. Secure loving upper-class family, natural-born American, smart, good school records, studied law and passed bar but decided to give it all up and put your life on the line for your country, is very good at what you do, decorated fifteen-year veteran of the Army, simultaneous clearance with the FBI, classified training record but no disciplinary issues, no courts-martial, numerous commendations for valor, bravery, heroism and self-sacrifice. No arrests, no time behind bars. You can see how you look next to Cam."

Shana could, and it made sense even if the unfairness of it all infuriated her. "But none of this was ever Cam's fault. She's acted throughout her life with honor and courage. Her Aunt and Uncle dying in the cabin fire was because she was desperate and thought death was the only way out."

"We're just going to have to see how this plays out," came a voice from behind them, and Alex and Shana both turned, to see Clayton standing there with Liv beside him and Auggie sleeping quietly in her arms. "But know this; we are going to stand behind her and defend her, as one of our own, throughout this fiasco, and I for one, an honored to have her in my unit." Despite the warmth in his voice, there was a spark of steel in the back of his eyes, and Shana understood that both Clayton Abernathy and General Hawk were going to fight for Cam.

And so, she suspected, was everyone else on base.

"I told her not to say anything. She PROMISED!" Shana knew she sounded whining and petulant, but she was so angry at Siobhan for what she'd done that she didn't care.

Abbie sighed, resting her chin on her cupped fist. "I knew this was going to come out sooner or later, but I was hoping it would come out during the trial, and not before. Now the defense has a chance to dig up anyone and everyone who ever knew the two of you to find dirt. Anything sensational, anything to sell papers and make headlines. Unfortunately for Cam, they're going to find plenty."

"But none of this was her fault!" Shana got up and paced, indignation overcoming her dignity; her boots thumped hollowly on Abbie's office floor. "Surely people can see that once they hear what her Aunt and Uncle did to her, what she was forced to do, everything she went through. She was a child, she had no choices in what was done to her, and those who should have been looking out for her welfare, those she most needed to be able to trust, were the once who betrayed her the worst and sold her without a second thought!"

"You're not going to hear any arguments from me there," Abbie sighed, looking sympathetically at Cam sitting in her wheelchair on the opposite side of the desk. "I think the entire situation has been deplorable and Cam should start suing a lot of people, starting with the US Military who didn't bother to check that the people they were sending a young girl to actually were related to her."

"I'm not suing the military. I'm not suing anyone. I just want to leave everyone alone and be left alone!" Cam exclaimed, and there was an edge of desperation in her voice. "I just want to live a quiet, ordinary life, why is that too much to ask?"

"It's not too much, and I agree, what's happened so far has been despicable. However, that does change a few things I was going to do."

"What?" Shana finally sat down; pacing was getting her nowhere.

"The bulk of my testimony is going to be on you, Shana, and not Cam. At first I thought I'd pull her to the forefront as my star witness; if the first thing the jury saw was the scars and they learned about the fire that killed her Aunt and Uncle later, their first impression would have been the lasting one, that Kennedy caused most of it. But with this now, the defense ids going to hammer in the fact that some of the scars were inflicted well before the trafficking and it won't have as much shock value. And you don't have much in the way of scars, so the case is going to rely pretty heavily on your testimony. Are you up to it?"

Shana stared at Abbie. "You're asking me that? Why didn't you ask Cam?"

"Because she promised Alex she would. But I haven't heard how committed you are in getting this guy. If you'd really rather not testify, I can't force you to."

"So because Cam promised she doesn't get a choice?" Shana's temper was already close to the surface after what Siobhan had done, and the continuing injustice of what was being done to her friend was just pushing her closer to the edge.

"I promised, Shana." Cam's soft words threatened to shatter Shana's anger. "I promised Alex I would testify. It's not just for me, Shana, or you, it's for everyone. It's for all of his victims, and it's for everyone like us who have been caught in the crime of human trafficking. I promised and I'll stick to it because it's the right thing to do."

"This is going to be hard on you."

"Like it hasn't already?" Cam drew in a deep but slightly shaky breath. "When I first came up with this idea and told everyone back at base that I wanted to go deepcover to find you, Clayton told me it was going to be hard, and he believed even I didn't know just how hard this was going to be. And he was right…it was so much harder this time than it was when I was fifteen. And there's a part of me right now that doesn't want to do this, Shana; it's not just Kennedy, it's Hans, and it's Rosa. I look at Hans on TV and all I can see is him on top of me while I was fighting off the anaphylaxis from the barbitol they gave me—the truth serum they used on you. And Rosa…" her eyes filled with tears, and she clenched her fists to stop her hands from shaking. "I see her on top of me taking the scar tissue off my chest, I want to throw her off, to push her off me and run away, but she injected me with something that paralyzed my muscles, and then my vocal cords, and I couldn't even scream…I'm going to have nightmares about that for the rest of my life. But I have to testify, Shana, for you, for the other girls I met when I was fifteen, and for every person whose body Kennedy threw in the ocean under the fishing platform. This isn't just justice for me, or for you, Shana. It's for all of us."

**Author's note:**

**And that's it for this book. Next week the first three chapters of the fourth book in this series, 'G.I. Joe: Sacrifice' will start going up, so look for it! Kennedy's prosecution, Kennedy's death (yes, he **_**is**_** going to die and we all know who's going to do it) and Shana and Snake Eyes' honeymoon are all coming up, so hang in there, we've still got a long way to go!**


End file.
